


Bad Romance

by mollygollyfolly



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Death Eaters, M/M, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, first wizarding war, minor characters - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:40:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 29,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollygollyfolly/pseuds/mollygollyfolly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”<br/>-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, <i>Crime and Punishment</i></p><p>You already know the ending. Here's the rest of the story. A multi-chaptered minor character fic set in the First Voldemort War, interspersed with modern day events. Many characters and pairings will be featured, and chapters will have specific warnings. WIP.</p><p>Bad Romance Volume 1: Fabian's years in Hogwarts<br/>Bad Romance Volume 2: Fabian's years working for the Ministry of Magic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

I write this sitting on the little porcelain sink in my cell. It was installed in the late nineties, and in the years before I can attest that we prisoners of Azkaban lived in the filthiest, rankest holes where it was all too likely for one to die of disease. I sit on my sink because it is the only other piece of furniture in my cell save for my bed, which is nothing more than a large plank nailed at a right angle to the wall and a layer of an old, patchy duvet for comfort.

I write this at the behest of a psychologist, Hannah Abbott. I say a psychologist because she is not my psychologist and I have no wish to see one. Dr Abbott has been appointed to the task of studying the psychological effects on prisoners of having Dementors guard this prison, as there is a growing political will to abolish this allegedly inhumane practice. Dr Abbott presented us each with diaries to fill, diaries which will presumably be subject to much psychoanalysis and presumptions of mental illnesses.

If I sound level and lucid then I am, the years of being locked up in isolation with only Dementors for company have not destroyed me because there was nothing to destroy. All my life, as I remember, has been a blend of soulless, transparent grey. In Moscow as in London and now the island of Azkaban far up north beyond Scotland, the skies were always grey where I went, heavy with the clouds of a foreboding past tinged with sour regret.

Tucked in the final pages of my diary is a photo, stolen, for I am and will always remain a criminal, though thievery must surely be the least of my crimes. I dare not look at this photo much, and what I have seen of it was in furtive glances, stolen too. Still, I like knowing that it is there, so that I can hold this diary close to myself, and know that what is inside is all that I have known, the best and worst of it.


	2. War is over, if you want it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ron Weasley helps his mum on a little task and finds out more than he wanted to know.

Sunlight, bright and scorching, burst through the windows of an old Huguenot house on Folgate Street, tucked in between units 13 and 15. No passerby would have seen the house, but all who passed agreed that warmth emanated from that place, the magical warmth of a home hearth crackling with love and joy.

Ronald Weasley was presently rustling up a cough remedy from Ollie James's 15 Minute Potions, a popular home-brewing recipe book by a roguish potions master with somewhat brusque methods.

Emulating the art of the master, Ronald Weasley folded a square of muslin around some Billywig stingers and unceremoniously whacked the little sack against the countertop.

"For goodness' sake Ronald!" Hermione Granger tutted. "Carry on with that and I'll be ill myself."

"I'm okay," Hugo Weasley mumbled weakly. "I swear I am. I'm good enough to sit up and eat. I can run and walk now."

"You, young sir, are strictly forbidden from any physical exertion until next week," Ron lectured. "You will go to your grandma's house and you will rest in bed only to get up at appropriate intervals for food and medicine."

"Will Lily be there?"

"Yes but she will be busy with the homework your aunt requested I set her," Hermione replied.

"Boo," Hugo said, cupping his cheeks with his palms and resting his elbows on the table.

When the cough remedy was ready, the three of them gathered their things and blew over to the Burrow with a handful of Floo dust. Hugo Weasley was to be looked after by his grandmother Molly, while his parents headed off to work on this sticky summer morning.

As he was about to leave, Molly pulled Ron aside and slipped a biscuit tin into the crook of his arm.

Quietly, she told him that she had finally got around to clearing the last of her brothers' belongings from the house. The biscuit tin belonged to Fabian, and it was warded with a spell she could not crack. The contents must have been important to Fabian, but as he was long gone and the tin showed no signs of yielding, she thought she might as well let Ron have a crack at it, and if there was nothing more to be done he could finally dispose of it for her. Even after several decades, Molly could not bear to discard anything precious to her late brothers.

Ron brought the tin to work and promptly got distracted by more urgent duties until it was time to leave, when he saw Harry Potter stood over his desk straining to pry the tin open.

"You cannot honestly be hoarding such tasty treats all to yourself, can you? My best friend of over twenty years!" Harry said.

"Erm...Harry, that tin is from the late seventies. I'm not sure its contents are edible."

"Oh."

"We should figure out how to open it anyway. It's for mum. Belonged to my Uncle Fabian this tin did."

Harry waggled his brows with much excitement. "Using the state of the art gadgetry of the Auror office?" 

The two of them proceeded into the laboratories where they attempted all forms of ward-breaking on the slightly rusty tin. It was nearly an hour of magical exertion when Ron, close to surrender, finally had the idea to call Bill for help. He picked up his shellphone, an outmoded, clunky conch the size of a brick, and called his eldest brother.

A miniature version of Bill's head popped out of the conch. He looked slightly annoyed, like he had been interrupted. Exasperated, he offered the ludicrous suggestion of banging the tin on the floor, claiming that it would crack open like an egg.

Incredulous but with nothing to lose, Harry flung the tin on the floor, whereupon it cracked and its contents spilled like runny yolk.

"Merlin's fucking underpants!" Bill croaked from the conch, his face suddenly contorting into expression of interest. "Well, well, well. That's pornography if I ever saw it!"

Bill was referring to a series of coloured photographs that were splayed like a fan across the floor. They seemed like blue holiday photos, in the other sense of the word, besides the fact that some of the photos were literally blue from the sky and sea.

Ron picked up one of the photos--coloured by a large expanse of flesh tones--with a shaky hand. "Ma never mentioned Uncle Fabian was a poof."

"--I'm not surprised," Bill cut in, whereupon Ron gave him a cold stare.

"Bloody fucking hell," Harry wheezed, peering pruriently over Ron's shoulder. "It's not just that your uncle seems to be cavorting in the nude with some other man, it seems that the other man is--was--" Harry choked on his words dramatically.

"A death eater!" Ron finished.


	3. Brighton (i)

Across the table from Antonin Dolohov sat the trio of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. In the middle of the table was a fairly innocuous-looking holiday photograph, of two men standing with their arms awkwardly around each other in front of Brighton Pier.

"Please describe the nature of your relationship with Fabian Prewett," Hermione Granger began.

"Fabian Prewett?" Dolohov said dismissively. "He was an idiot. Such a fool. It is hard to believe how he had any credibility at all."

"What do you mean," Ron hissed. "Do you mean to imply he was on the dark side all this while?"

"No," Dolohov said. "He is too stupid for that sort of thing."

Ron scowled darkly. He looked like he was about to explode. "All right. We get that you don't like him. So can you please explain why, despite your apparent contempt, you seem to be chums in this photo?"

"This photo is evidently doctored," Dolohov said. "The pose is awkward and unnatural. I don't know what game you're playing but it is sad you have to stoop to such fabrications."

"Fabrications?" Ron exploded with rage. He threw another photo on the table. "What about this then!"

Dolohov quietly surveyed the photo for a while. This photo was considerably more compromising than the first, as it depicted two men locked in an embrace, standing on a sunny beach clutching, respectively, a 99 flake and an ice lolly. The dark-haired man had an arm enthusiastically wrapped around the other's neck and his lips were pressed to the other's freckled cheek in a pucker. The 99 flake balanced precariously off its cone and the redheaded man's ice lolly was askew and melting over his fingers.

Dolohov looked quizzically at the trio and insisted he knew nothing of the photo, not its provenance nor how it had come to be taken. The trio persisted in their questioning until it became evident that Ron was about to throw an apoplectic fit and flip the table over in frustration.

Hermione swiftly sought to end to the interview and had Dolohov brought back to his cell. Ron was still incensed and muttering away so Harry dug into the biscuit tin and pulled up what he knew was the perfect diversion.

"So if Dolohov is a dead end, how about the Malfoys?" Harry said, with a devilish twinkle in his eyes. He brandished an old, yellowed copy of Utter Hogwash, the Hogwarts student newsletter. On the front page was a large photo of Narcissa Black, as she was known then, sparkling in a shimmering blue dress mid-duet with a dapper Fabian Prewett on a stage. The angle of the photo made it seem like they were gazing lovingly into each other's eyes.

Ron Weasley nearly burst a vein in his forehead and almost died of an aneurysm on the spot.


	4. Oh poor cousin Evan!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry, Ron and Hermione visit Narcissa Malfoy to find out more about her years in Hogwarts.

The haste with which Narcissa Malfoy sent her owl in reply stunned all three. Hermione had written in polite and formal terms requesting an interview in the strictest confidence about Fabian Prewett's liaisons with the Death Eaters, particularly romantic liaisons, to assist in a confidential investigation into his allegiances, expecting a firm rejection.

Mrs Malfoy eagerly welcomed them into her home and invited them to chat over tea. In her middle age she had taken on a slightly batty disposition, perhaps as a defense against all the allegations of evil wrongdoing to escape the arm of justice in the post-Voldemort world.

They were led into the most wondrous garden in this part of Wiltshire. It was warm and abuzz with colour and exotic spices from far-flung regions. There was a distinct if somewhat colonial Indian theme to the garden, probably betraying parts of Malfoy history Hermione would rather not know.

Mrs Malfoy had the elves bring out the finest tea from all over in the daintiest bone china. Hermione was unable to restrain herself from asking if these elves were now in paid employment. Mrs Malfoy indicated the affirmative, though from her expression it seemed grudgingly so.

After several sips of a multilayered, aromatic tea and a few nibbles of the thinnest cucumber sandwiches, Hermione cleared her throat to begin. "Please be assured, Mrs Malfoy, that everything you say will be in the strictest confidence."

"Oh, please call me Narcissa. And honestly, one doesn't mind if this gets out. One feels one is getting on, and one simply must tell this story before one loses it. Even if it is...it is..." she trailed off.

"It is?" Hermione prompted.

"...too late now!" Narcissa sighed dramatically.

Harry and Ron exchanged incredulous looks. Narcissa carried on, unaware of the reception to her melodrama. "Oh poor cousin Evan!" She sighed.

"Evan? Do you mean Evan Rosier?" Hermione prodded.

"Yes! Aren't we here to discuss Fabian's romantic liaisons? Ah! Cousin Evan was on the brink of redemption. If only they could be in love again and things went back to the way they were...."

From somewhere behind her, Hermione could hear Ron choking on a mille-feuille.

"Do you mean to say Fabian Prewett and Evan Rosier were romantically involved?" she questioned.

"Oh they were, back in Hogwarts, but they fell out in year seven. One maintains that they always had affection for each other even after and if only they would rekindle that flame...."

Ron began glugging down copious mouthfuls of exquisite osmanthus tea in a bid to restrain from choking.

"Please tell me more!" Hermione prompted through a forced smile. She was trying very hard not to break into laughter at her husband's behaviour but worried if she would first die of social embarrassment.


	5. Teenage Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The year is 1971, and the Hogwarts Quidditch season opens with Gryffindor vs Slytherin.

There was nary a sound in the Hogwarts library, not even the rustling of a page or the occasional cough or sniffle from a poorly student succumbing to the stress of academic obligations. The library was empty, all was a hush. Behind her desk Madam Pince browsed silently through a book catalogue, tasked with purchasing several new tomes that would stretch the young minds of the students.

In the far corner, where the section for Undersea Potion Ingredient Harvesting ended and where the Agrippan method of Arithmancy began, where tall, gangly shelves cloistered a small cluster of wooden desks, lay the Raven's Nest, the den where the most studious of Ravenclaws were frequently found with beaks buried in books. In the midst of the Nest a lone student sat, a tall, gangly, freckled fifth year student with a shock of red hair and too-short trousers that ended above his ankles and too-short sleeves that ended before his wrists. The student was rifling through Principia Arithmomantia, looking for a particular proof. It was far too quiet, beyond the usual library hush, as to be slightly unnerving, though this student seemed blissfully unaware.

The silence was abruptly shattered by the entrance of Hogwarts's top student according to the academic performance tables, followed by a procession of levitating potion books. This student made her way to the nest and the books clattered noisily onto the table.

"What are you doing here?" Alice Giggs asked.

Fabian Prewett looked up from his books. "What do you mean?"

"Your brother's match? His first as captain of Gryffindor?"

There was a sudden crash as Fabian stood up with alacrity, the chair he until recently occupied falling to the ground.

"Gryffindor versus Slytherin!" he exclaimed, swiftly gathering his things. "Oh I'm late!" he blabbered. "Has it kicked off?"

Alice nodded with disdain. The emptiness of the library could be ascribed to this violent, barbaric sport, as students indulged in the spirit of pre-civilisation ancestors, cheering lustily for the complete annihilation of the enemy.

Fabian suddenly enfolded her in a tight hug as he expressed his utmost gratitude for her reminder. He would not forgive himself if he missed his twin brother's first match as captain.

As he dashed pitchward, from a distance he could already see tiny figures, some clad in red and some in green, rising above the stands to kick off the school year's Quidditch opener.

Gideon Prewett was his identical twin brother but most, if asked, would scarcely believe it. Sorted into separate houses in their first year, their paths diverged ever farther since. Gideon Prewett was immediately likeable and popular, with a spotless reputation as one shining with a genuine goodness and approachability.

Fabian Prewett, by some twist of fate, was the lesser and younger of the two, always seeking cover behind his books from the cruelty of the world. Gentle by nature but lost in the fantasy of his inner world, he struggled with the intricate nuances of social convention.

Making his way up the stand, his gangly, stick-like legs flopping up over the steps two by two, he reached the highest stand where he squeezed his way into a gap between two students.

"Frank Longbottom is soooooo dreamy, don't you think?" A third year female student sighed.

"Oh but I think Alistair Thomas is the one for me," her friend gushed. "He has the grace of a true aristocrat."

"I want Gideon Prewett, but it's such a tragedy that he's taken," yet another swooned, a very young boy who looked no older than a third-year.

Fabian had half a mind to clear his throat, which he decided to, because he did not like hearing of his brother discussed this way, and the gaggle of gushing students glared at him with mild distaste.

Up in the sky, high above them like the deities of the student body, the well-formed and physically perfect Quidditch players of Hogwarts darted about the sky revelling in the suppleness of their youthful physique.

Gryffindor were leading by a small margin, thanks to the combined power of Prewett, Longbottom and Elkins. Gideon Prewett was the classic midfield playmaker, dictating the tempo of the game with the silkiest passes. Frank Longbottom was the sweeper, snaffling the Quaffle from the opponent before they could threaten, and Elveira Elkins was the forward, driving into goal with an unstoppable fierceness.

However, for all the spirit of play from the House of Gryffindor, the House of Slytherin had an effortless counterpart oozing with talent. Holding the fort was team captain Alistair Lindsay Thomas, who, since taking the reins from the incomparable (if somewhat brutal) Beater Bellatrix Lestrange, built a team known for aerial grace. The jewel in this crown was Evan Rosier, a seeker who embodied poetry in motion, who ensnared the hearts of many of the Hogwarts population as he ensnared the Golden Snitch. Rosier, whose waves of dark hair fell about his handsome face in a perfect frame, with eyes of piercing blue the shade of the Aegean Sea, whence the maternal branch sprung. Some might have considered his slight frame a possible flaw but for a seeker he had the perfect build. To deepen his appeal he had a complicated family history, and bore on him the pain of parents early separated in a high-profile divorce that filled the gossip pages for months. Yet thanks to this heritage in him lay the classic beauty of Greece and the honour of noble English blood. To this, it is added in whispers, the inheritance of a vast shipping wealth and the unshakeable seat of an ancient dwelling.

It was ultimately the sublime skill of Evan Rosier that decided the match. In an elegant sleight of hand it was as if he conjured the snitch out of his sleeve, and the season opener was over.

Overcome with guilt that his brother should lose his first match, Fabian made his way to the sweaty, stinky locker rooms after the match to offer a few consolatory words. He gave his shirtless brother an affectionate hug, inviting a few murmurs about their suspicious closeness, and patted Longbottom and Elkins on the shoulder, who both responded with polite smiles at his sympathy.

He turned to leave as the Slytherin team began filing in. The Slytherins congratulated Gryffindor on a match well-played, and the Gryffindors responded in all sincerity, for these were times in which inter-house relations were cordial. Sportsmanship and graciousness were held in high regard, and the true student hierarchy was determined by one's popularity-of which all Quidditch players had in spades.

As Fabian left the locker room, he was vaguely aware that he was being tailed. He hurried along into the castle grounds to lose his pursuer, meandering around sparsely populated, little-known areas until he lost his patience and did an about-turn. Evan Rosier had been tailing him, still clad in his Quidditch outfit, for goodness knows what.

"Are you following me?" Fabian demanded.

"What? No," Evan feigned surprise. "I was just searching for an empty bathroom."

"You know as well as I do that there are no bathroom stalls on the fifth floor of this wing," Fabian replied, for they were both prefects of their respective houses and better acquainted with the grounds due to patrolling duties.

"Well, maybe an empty loo?" Evan shrugged, putting on a clueless, pouty expression that Fabian found incredibly infuriating.

"Ugh!" Fabian said in disgust, although he couldn't exactly tell what he was disgusted at. Was it the aggravatingly bad acting of Evan Rosier? Was it...himself? Particularly, the tumultuous mix of feelings that hit him every time he looked at that handsome, aristocratic face?

Evan smiled at him, a cheeky half-smirk and Fabian could resist no longer. He leaned forward and grabbed Evan and they began snogging like two hormonal teenagers in the grips of rabid puberty.


	6. Poor, love-starved boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What brought Evan and Fabian together in the first place?

Just at the close of summer, in the weeks before school was about to start, there appeared an article in the Daily Prophet that shook the foundations of the wizarding world. It was announced that a series of new rules, pending approval, would be put forth, governing the suitability of those who would sit on the Wizengamot.

No longer could scions of the old magic houses ascend automatically to the Wizengamot. Due to the increasing political will to ensure that wastrels were not occupying the Wizengamot when a plethora of better-suited but less well born candidates were available, it was proposed that all peers should meet certain basic academic requirements to ensure a functioning knowledge of magic.

This caused quite a stir, notably amongst the upper classes of the wizarding world, though due to sheer pride their public front was one in which they claimed the minimum academic requirements were to pose no obstacle at all.

All this resulted in a private conversation between Evan Rosier and Fabian Prewett on the first day of their fifth year in Hogwarts. Evan Rosier was of the sporting type, and failed to apply himself academically and was therefore behind on his magical learning. Due to parental and external pressure he required extracurricular tutoring to get him up to speed, and he needed to pick a non-threatening but intelligent student who would discreetly coach him in exam-passing ways. For this reason he singled out the somewhat friendless Fabian Prewett, who was surprisingly appointed to the post of Ravenclaw prefect.

Clandestine tutoring sessions were set up, to take place in the cover of dark and away from sight, for the embarrassment of having need of tutoring would be too much for Evan to bear. It was through these sessions that teenage infatuation began to blossom between the two boys, for in his loneliness Fabian must have found this sudden and close attention from a highly desirable member of the student body overwhelming.

…

Narcissa Malfoy coughed and gently patted the corners of her mouth with her napkin.

"If Evan was so attractive, as you say, why would he even bother with Fabian?" Ron asked with an unpleasant frown.

"Oh, please do not be quick to judge cousin Evan. He was a poor, love-starved boy as well, what with his parents. He must have found Fabian's infatuation very gratifying and together they had a love that fortified them against the harshness of the real world..."

Ron looked like he was about to throw up.

Harry jumped in before things got out of hand, and waved the old and yellowed copy of Utter Hogwash in Mrs Malfoy's face. "What then do you make of this picture?"

Narcissa's eyes lit up upon seeing the photo. "Ah! One has nearly forgot! It was the Hogsmeade Fayre!"

"The Hogsmeade Fayre?" Hermione questioned. "What was it?"

"A charity fundraiser!" Narcissa exclaimed in delight. It seemed that charity fundraisers really got her going, Hermione silently noted.

"It was for the benefit of the Hogwarts Student Foundation, which hands out scholarships and bursaries to students from less privileged backgrounds," Narcissa declared pompously. "Your Uncle Fabian was a notable recipient of this aid, as, I'm sure," -she sniffed- "members of your family have been."

Hermione could see Ron gripping the fine china cup so tightly he was about to snap the handle off. She put a hand on his knee, and Ron gave her a pleading, get-me-out-of-here look.


	7. Banoffee Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucius Malfoy confronts Evan Rosier with some suspicions.

Evan Rosier was pootling down towards the Great Hall, having just come from History of Magic class, of which the mind-numbingly dull subject inadvertently caused him to become fixated on his next meal, which often led to a groaning in his stomach. Now that it was time for lunch he was eager to see the choices on offer. He hoped that there was banoffee pie today, o sweet, delectable banoffee pie, the perfect blend of condensed milk and banana, as homely and toothsome a pudding could ever be.

As he descended the stairs he felt a resistance tugging at his sleeve. Whomever was so bold as to hinder his quest for pudding!

Lo, it was Lucius Malfoy, exemplar bar none of the nouveau riche, mercenary scum of the earth whose coat tails were fit only for Quidditch-boot wiping. Quidditch boot wiping after said boot had trod upon a muddied field after a thunderstorm. What did this pest want of him?

" _Rosier_ ," Malfoy hissed in a conspiratorial tone.

"What?"

"I have a..." Malfoy shuffled his feet and swivelled his foot upon the ankle in an uncertain manner. "I have a request to make of you. Do you have time to spare?"

Evan thought of his banoffee pie. Flatly, he said, "No."

Malfoy frowned. "Please?" he begged.

"What could be so important?"

"Ah," said Malfoy, anxiety crossing his face. "It concerns your cousin."

"Cissy?" Evan said loudly.

Malfoy had a startled look like a stunned hinkypuff. "Please moderate your volume. I can't have others eavesdropping...."

"Oh I know," Evan sighed dramatically. "You're in love with her. You wish me to put in a good word for you that you may begin your courtship of her. You wish to have my blessing in wooing my cousin."

A pink flush descended upon the cheeks of Lucius Malfoy. "No! It was for another more pertinent reason...."

"Honestly!" Evan remarked. "You're only about the five hundred and seventeenth person to do so. I'm sorry but you've got no chance with her. Good day."

"I mean to ask," Malfoy choked out. "It has come to my attention that she has been spending a considerable amount of time in the company of one Fabian Prewett."

" _L'etudiant pauvre_? Are you wondering why she would stoop to someone like him? After all, what can he offer that you can't?"

Malfoy looked affronted. "I am not that crass! I am merely wondering if she has been taken."

"For that matter, my cousin is not an object for you, or anyone, to take! If she chooses to spend her time with that _pauvre_ she jolly well can! She is not taken but merely preoccupied."

Malfoy frowned at him. He had the appearance of a man greatly offended.

"Never take offence, my dear," Evan said. "Offence is for small people."

…..

Much to his dismay there was no banoffee pie to be had. The pudding of the day was sponge cake, which Evan scarfed down anyway.

After this most unsatisfactory of lunches he charged to the prefect's room, to file away some bookings he made for uniform breaches (failure to attach crest on outer robe with correct sticking spell, wearing of ugly shoes, failure to wear house tie in the correct knot) to assuage his emotional state.

He chanced upon Cissy and Fabian in the prefect's room, practising the duet they were to perform at the Hogsmeade Fayre talent show that was to round off a day of fundraising festivities.

"You'd never guess who tried to talk to me today," Evan began.

"Hester Wiggleswade?" Narcissa Black ventured.

Evan wrinkled his nose in disgust. "No. Lucius Malfoy."

Narcissa looked surprised and struggled to mask her genuine interest. "What business does he have with you?"

"It's not me, Cissy. It's you he wants."

"Oh, tosh," Cissy dismissed. "As if."

"He thinks you're seeing Fabian," Evan continued. "He's getting all green-eyed. What do you say, Fabykins? Lucius Malfoy thinks you're seeing Narcissa Black!"

"Wherever did he get the idea?" said Fabian, slightly taken aback. He was used to being invisible and it surprised him to realise that students of much higher social standing were taking notice of him.

"Oh I don't know. Maybe because I'm always around Cissy and you're always around me?"

"I'm not always around you!" Fabian protested. "I thought we did a good job of being discreet."

"Oh!" Narcissa interjected. "Fabian dear, do not worry, if word gets around we're seeing each other it can only affirm that you have reoriented yourself. That is good, as it also improves your social standing by dint of being approved by _one_."

"You think too much of yourself, Cissy darling," Evan teased.

"Reoriented myself," Fabian mumbled, still fixated on the idea that rumours about him were circulating once more. He thought he was done with this in third year with the whole George Varey Goode business.

"Fret not my love," Evan began, and then sprawled himself over the sofa. He reached an arm over the back to where Fabian was standing, and gave him a naughty pinch on the bum.

Fabian squealed defensively, and from the piano, where Narcissa was sitting, there was another squeal, but of barely-concealed delight. Both boys cast a look at her, whereupon she hastily apologised and went back to playing a jaunty tune grinning to herself.

Fabian's face contorted to a series of expressions meant to convey the message that all this was really rather inappropriate but Evan ignored him save for a little smirk that said that this naughty business was to be continued.


	8. The Hogsmeade Fayre

The day of the Hogsmeade Fayre had finally come around and the entire village of Hogsmeade was overrun with Hogwarts students eager to do their part for charity. On this day, parents and visitors were encouraged to visit and to participate in the student-run game booths, or to purchase a handmade trinket or two. Meanwhile, the teaching staff was relegated to observation, having been convinced by the prefectorial board that they were more than capable of being in charge.

All was abuzz and as a prefect Fabian's duty was to move from booth to booth, ensuring nothing had gone out of hand. Presently he came to a game booth run by the Potions Club, in which participants sat on a levitating chair and had to answer questions of increasing difficulty or face being dunked into a voluminous vat of potion gurgling with foreboding. The particular type of potion the ardent challenger faced being smothered in was chosen at random via spin-a-wand.

As chair of the Potions Club, Alice Giggs took leave from her prefectorial duties from time to time to hold the post of gamemaster. It was at this point that Fabian decided to submit himself, for the greater good of the charitable cause, to the possibility of turning blue for an entire week, or to suffer from extremely large boogers, or to speak everything backwards or...whatever ill-begotten curse the mystery potion would inflict.

Alice greeted him cheerily as he strapped himself into the levitating chair. Underneath, a cauldron the size of a bathtub bubbled with cheerful malice, swirling from colour to colour, each a winking flash of certain doom.

With a perfectly innocuous smile, Alice announced that she would start with "difficult" questions and move on to monstrously difficult and then to pants-wettingly difficult and so on.

For a moment, Fabian considered reminding Alice of their longstanding friendship, but he was fairly sure Alice was not one to make light of such things and quelled himself of the urge.

A greasy-haired first-year potions club member hoisted Fabian and his chair into the air, and then went back to his usual business of stirring the sinister mix of fates in the cauldron. Sometime through, Fabian saw him scratch his hair, and flakes of dandruff fell into the cauldron, whereupon they burst into flames with a loud crackle. 

\--Just as she was about to start, Alice was called away to some important prefectorial duty or other, so the first year student took over the question cards and began grilling Fabian.

Fabian was coasting along comfortably, handling the questions with ease when a group of young, swaggering students turned up, ousted the first year Potions Club boy with an exaggerated shove, and began to ask Fabian ridiculous, off-the-cards questions.

At the same time, because the questions barely ruffled the outer twigs of the overstuffed nest that was his brain, his chair had risen to a height where he had a spectacular, if somewhat unsettling view of Hogsmeade. In the village square, Professor Flitwick was conducting the Hogwarts Choir, their limber vocal chords thrilling the crowd with harmonic glee. The Bowtruckle Club had a booth at the far end, where hoarders buzzed around the blossom of assorted vintage trinkets, probing opportunistically before the auction hammer. There came a point where the levitating chair had gone too high and the spell was starting to lose potency. It began to quiver and wobble, and Fabian gripped the sides tightly, seized by his fear of heights, and tried in vain to muster up enough courage to peel his white-knuckled hand from the side of the chair in order to pick up his wand and stabilise the weakening levitation charm.

In the distance, he heard an exclamation and saw his brother dashing straight for the Potions Club booth, tailed by his usual posse of Quidditch chums. The chair shook precariously, and there was some commotion below. From this point he also saw Alice realise that a crisis was at hand and she abandoned her post at Informational Services post-haste.

At this time, the sun was setting and a blast of wind blew over the land, tipping Fabian and his chair over in a loop-de-loop. Fabian squeaked in fright and from behind his tightly-squeezed eyelids he sensed a flash of light from below, like a bolt of upside-down lightning, which whipped around his chair and tethered him. Professor Flitwick had cast a lasso charm around the chair.

Alice began lecturing the hijackers of her game, who sputtered with excuses that it was all in good fun and no harm was done, but Alice, bless her, was never one to have a sense of humour and grew increasingly agitated by the blasé attitude towards safety regulations.

With Flitwick reeling him in like a kite to the ground, Fabian came within earshot of the commotion. The young students muttered that Alice was a humourless shrew, and implied that she was probably on the chubby side and for this reason no male of the species would ever find her attractive.

Before Alice could reply, Frank Longbottom, first mate of the S.S. Gryffindor Quidditch Team Dream Boat, burst into a fit of rage at the offending firsties.

"Oh, look at me, I'm so clever and witty I resort to namecalling because I'm so--ha ha ha--funny!" Frank remarked sarcastically, throwing his hands up in the air and wiggling his fingers exasperatedly.

"It was just a joke," one of them whined. "I didn't know you seniors can't take a joke."

"Where's your house loyalty, man?" another chimed in. "Gryffindors for Gryffindors, huh? Defend us from this Ravenclaw banshee."

Frank's well-groomed eyebrows twisted into an expression of incredulity. He paused for a moment, and then tipped the giant bubbling cauldron onto the band of offenders. Slurping and glurping, the contents of the cauldron crawled down in a slimy sludge, enveloping the querulous firsties in a multicoloured goo, congealing them into single, slimy mass. The large mound of jelly wobbled to the left, and then to the right, and then finally off towards the castle, presumably to get cleaned up.

True to the humourless form of the senior students, no one was seen laughing. They merely exchanged many knowing looks. There was a truth that revealed itself in time to all seniors and it was how the new students will always be ever increasingly unintelligent and offensive.

Frank Longbottom asked Alice Giggs if she was all right, to which she replied that she could have handled the situation herself, and if Frank was looking for kudos or gratitude for jumping in to defend her honour it was not going to be found.

Almost immediately, Frank apologised in reply, and said that it was regretful that he felt entitled to butt in only because he thought his words would hold more sway as a popular and male Quidditch player, which stemmed from the same place as the firsties in their prejudice.

It later transpired that even after scrubbing themselves clean of the slimy jelly, the offending students suffered from monstrous dandruff over the next few months, in which the dandruff flakes were as large as Sickles and occasionally flapped around their heads like hairy moths, multiplying with each scratch of the head. Reportedly, it was also unbearably, irresistibly itchy.


	9. I'll Cast A Spell On You

Fabian Prewett eventually recovered enough of his voice to sing onstage in the highlight of the night, a series of jazzed-up love songs taken from various popular musicals. It was Narcissa's idea that it should be particularly glamorous, and for this occasion she was clad in a slinky, pearly blue sequinned gown with ultra-glitzy long white satin gloves. Fabian, a run-of-the-mill Welsh boy on school assistance, had nothing to wear and was at the last minute lovingly outfitted by his boyfriend Evan Rosier. Evan had pulled together a dressy outfit from various wardrobes, including his own, and had gone to the effort of alteration charms to get the fit just right. Fabian had never seen himself look so dapper, and he thought that if he looked like this every day, he might just fall in love with himself too.

The talent show was a rousing success, and being prefects, Narcissa and Fabian were not actually competing. Theirs was to fill the interlude while the judges, comprised of a collection of professors and prefects, finalised their top picks of the night. A few tongues were set wagging about the nature of Narcissa and Fabian's relationship, but even more tongues wagged when Fabian refused to change the pronouns in the song "I'll Cast A Spell On You", thus making it rather apparent that he was longing for a "man's strong embrace".

Lucius Malfoy sat on the judging panel as a sixth-year Slytherin prefect. The whole performance rather perturbed him and he was squirming in his seat at its various implications. Narcissa was very, very alluring this evening, and he could swear that she was directing her song to a particular member of the audience. Based on his powers of observation, he deduced that she must have been gazing at Alistair Thomas during the bridge of Floo Me To The Moon and at each point before the chorus of Choco Froggo Lovin'.

Halfway through Cheek To Beak, a song about a lover who was turned into a hippogriff and back again, Alistair Thomas, who had been standing behind Lucius all this while, leaned in and said to him, "I think a particular Miss Black has a message for you."

"What?" Lucius croaked, doubting his ears.

"I have it on good authority," Alistair said firmly, hoping the hint was more apparent this time.

Lucius felt overcome with nausea. It was cruel, so cruel, for his best friend to play with his emotions like this. Could he not see that all this while Narcissa was making goo goo eyes in _his_ direction? Did she not beg for his company for dinner just this past week? He felt a soul crushing devastation. He imagined himself as the best man at the wedding of Alistair Thomas and Narcissa Black, now to be Mrs Thomas....

He was startled from his fervent imaginings when Professor McGonagall demanded his scoring papers to tally up the top ten, who would be rewarded with book vouchers from Flourish and Blotts.

The evening soon concluded and everyone began heaping praise on Narcissa Black for her wonderful organisation and initiative as chief planner for the Hogsmeade Fayre. In truth, a major contributing factor to the nearly authoritarian powers of the prefectorial board came down to what can be termed the Black Axis. Andromeda Black was in her final year at Hogwarts and had ascended to the throne of Head Girl, accompanied by her Prince Consort, Edward Tonks, who took on the role of Head Boy.

They could be rightly termed a power couple, for each complemented the other perfectly and both were so finely skilled in social graces that no one ever made an enemy of them.

Two years below, as Andromeda's younger sister, Narcissa, being naturally full of fancy, devised numerous propaganda campaigns to sustain their popularity at a high. It was the month of February that saw her second campaign.


	10. Floo Me To The Moon

For this particular occasion, the fourteenth of February, Narcissa received approval from Professor Dumbledore for yet another fundraising scheme. For a small fee that would go towards the Friends of Sherwood Forest Fund, a student received a small, fluttering piece of pink parchment shaped like a heart, on which could be scribbled a sentimental phrase or two. The little heart-shaped parchment would then fly onwards to its prescribed recipient, flapping its two halves like a butterfly and leaving a trail of pink and red sparkles.

For a larger fee, the prefects would play the part of singing minstrels on behalf of the enterprising paramour to convey the impassioned message to their heart's desire.

One day before V-day, Fabian was collecting donations at the booth just inside the Great Hall when he saw his twin brother approaching.

Gideon looked moderately vexed, and when he reached the booth he spontaneously squeezed himself onto Fabian's chair, so that Fabian had to dangle on a single bum cheek in order to maintain a seated position while accommodating his brother.

Fabian noticed some of the students looking up at Gideon with barely-concealed delight, and he swore he saw at that moment some of them put in extra donations and help themselves to a handful of parchments on which they scribbled enthusiastically while sneaking admiring looks at his brother.

"So uh," Gideon began in a low tone, "is there really no provision in the school rules allowing students to wear a combination of the official uniform as they saw fit?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean uh, we all have our robes, right, the ones lined in our house colour? And under our robes we wear a shirt and house tie, and supposedly, girls have to wear a skirt and boys trousers."

"Yes?"

"And is it against school rules for girls to wear trousers? What if, strictly, she doesn't consider herself a girl anyway?"

"What do you mean?" Fabian asked, unsure where this was leading.

Gideon looked at him accusingly. "I thought you would be well-acquainted with school rules! You seem to have memorised everything there is to know from the Encyclopedia Magica."

Fabian bristled with mild annoyance. "I don't care for pedantry of that sort!"

"You know Charlie? Charlie McKinnon?"

Fabian tried to remember. It was the younger sibling of Marlene McKinnon, Hufflepuff Quidditch Captain. Fabian suspected Gideon and Marlene had a thing for each other but had no idea how far they had progressed on admitting their feelings. Sometimes he wondered if he should get the word out on Gideon's behalf.

"Well Lucius Malfoy had him booked for wearing trousers!" Gideon concluded.

Fabian then recalled seeing Lucius Malfoy file in a booking in the prefect's room just a couple of hours ago on Charlotte McKinnon--uniform breach. To the casual eavesdropper the conversation may have sounded slightly confusing but Charlie dressed and acted like a boy, so it seemed natural to address a person by their preferred pronoun.

"So--this is actually Marlene's idea--, we were thinking that it's a really preposterous rule, because, come on, trousers and skirts are both part of the official school uniform, so as long as any person has either one, or even both on, it shouldn't be a breach of school rules. Wouldn't you agree that the underlying purpose here is that we do not have students running around in their underpants? It should be the spirit of the law that matters."

"Yes?" Fabian prodded, although he already had some idea of where this was going.

"So..." Gideon said again, "we're thinking of doing a protest tomorrow by encouraging students to wear the lower garment of their choosing, be it a skirt or trousers or both!"

Fabian took a deep breath before cutting in. "And you'll be in a skirt!"

Gideon feigned an expression of shock. "As always, you read my mind, dear brother!"

"I'm not done with my telepathy," Fabian said. "You want me in a skirt as well, you big old pervert."

Gideon grinned at Fabian lecherously, running a hand up and down Fabian's thigh. "Legs like yours," he said in a silky tone, "shouldn't be kept hidden from the world."

Fabian decided to retaliate with a grope in a naughty region and then realised too late that some first year girl was gaping at them. He hastily apologised and emphasised that it was all in jest.

Evan Rosier turned up while Gideon still had a hand on Fabian's thigh, and gave Fabian a surreptitious nod of approval that he found this incestuous hanky-panky a huge turn-on.

...

Later, Fabian informed Evan of his intention to cross-dress, after which Evan informed Narcissa of _his_ intention to cross dress and it was imperative they borrowed her skirts for this endeavour.

Narcissa seemed to find the idea particularly exciting, and borrowed a pair of school trousers from Evan in exchange for two skirts. Being small in stature, Narcissa's skirts, when worn by the tallish Fabian, were of a rather indecent length, but due to Evan's fervent protestations Fabian was not allowed to increase the length of his skirt.

"You do know that at this length my skirt is completely in breach of school regulations regardless? "

Evan nodded with a satisfied smirk. Narcissa remarked that it was no different to the Scottish in their kilts, or the ancient Greeks in their togas. After that, she went back to scanning all the Valentine's messages for choice bits of gossip, which she giddily relayed to her cousin. Fabian protested that this was a breach of privacy, but Narcissa argued that since all messages were signed off anonymously, all she did was merely speculate on the identity of the persons involved.

...

Valentine's Day rolled around surely enough, and during breakfast time a sizeable chunk of the student populace turned up in irregular uniforms. The bolder students seized the opportunity to break even more school rules, wearing robes and ties of mismatched houses or fashioning school ties into belts and many girls turned up in trousers, a handful of boys in skirts, and many more boys with skirts over trousers.

Lucius Malfoy nearly threw a fit upon the sight, and was about to go on a mass-booking spree when he espied Narcissa Black gliding into the hall in a pair of curiously well-fitting school trousers, perfectly cinched at the waist and tapering down gently to skim the ankles. What confoundment had befallen the school! This was getting far too out of hand! A blurring of the lines between the genders, combined with blatant uniform breaches that signified irreversible moral decay....

Presently, Narcissa Black floated over to the Slytherin table and helped herself to a serving of eggs on toast. Upon noticing that Lucius Malfoy was looking at her she greeted him perkily.

Lucius Malfoy felt a pang of betrayal. He was fairly certain this cross-dressing caper was orchestrated by the pesky Quidditch players whose popularity had gone too far above their heads and believed they were above school rules. He did not expect that the cherished one of his heart should participate in this celebration of anarchy.

He looked across the hall to the Hufflepuff table, where Charlotte McKinnon sat partaking breakfast with her older sister, who was also clad in trousers. From this distance he glared at them, emanating a silent resentment, swearing to himself that he would exact his revenge. He saw that blight on humanity of a Gryffindor Quidditch Captain approach that table and perch himself atop it, crossing his legs sultrily in a rather obscene d for all the world to see.

He then saw that other worse blight on humanity, the twin brother of the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain, approach that very same table, clad in the most indecent of skirts it was barely a skirt and more like a thick belt. Had he no sense of shame? He was dressed like a hussy! Lucius felt bile rising to his throat.

So, that was the malignant influence on his cherished one! The déclassé freckled ginger Welsh boy and his boorish brother and his boorish brother's girlfriend and her morally deficient younger sister, who refused to accept what fate had dealt to her and was clearly delusional about her identity.

"Lucius!" Evan Rosier called, reaching uncomfortable levels of familiarity with the first name. Lucius noted that he, too, was clad in a skirt. "Why so..." Evan paused, searching for the right word. "Constipated!" he finally emitted.

All around him, students burst into cruel laughter. Rosier then bent over and flashed his bare bottom into Lucius's face. The laughter grew ever more raucous.

At this, he felt himself being gently scooted away. Looking over his arm, he saw that it was Narcissa and his heart quickened a bit. He suddenly felt guilty, like he didn't want to appear stodgy and humourless before her.

Having manoeuvred Lucius into a private corner, Narcissa asked him if he was feeling fine. Lucius began to confess that all this anarchy was a reaction to a booking he made yesterday, whereupon Narcissa gently chided him for being a dullard, and that he should watch himself before he got too Muggle in his thinking, when true wizarding ancestors of yore pranced around freely in their togas and kilts and robes.


	11. Valentine's Day

Andromeda Black grew sympathetic to the cause of the gender-benders and as Head Girl, called for a meeting with Headmaster Dumbledore to get the rules relaxed. It was fortuitous that Professor Dumbledore had no interest in seeing these rules enforced anyway, so these school rules were provisionally abolished, but approval from the school board would be required to officially remove the rules from the rulebook.

Meanwhile, the Valentine's messages began reaching their intended recipients, as after the first period, the prefects started distributing them by shaking the messages out of the box as if to wake them up. Like thousands of butterflies on migration, the messages rose out of the boxes to swarm the hallways, perching on the corridors outside if the intended recipient was caught in class. 

It quickly became evident that some students were more beloved than others. Quidditch players, in particular, received a large share of the messages.

Fabian saw that his brother was already at the point of being beleaguered by parchment hearts, and what once seemed like lovely butterflies now took on the demeanour of loathsome insects. These parchment hearts would only quell after being read, but, not having nearly enough time to read all his messages, the unread parchment hearts grew ever livelier and began sitting on his head or his nose, or his ears, now to dart into his schoolbag, or now to squeeze itself into an overfull pocket already stuffed with other parchment hearts.

Frank Longbottom seemed to suffer a similar fate, but struck upon the brilliant idea of suavely asking those around him to help read his messages aloud for him. This gave the students who were enamoured of Frank the perfect opportunity to declare their love for him, and Fabian saw some students secretly discard messages from rivals they did not approve of.

Gideon, however, was not prone to such flirtatiousness, so he ran to Fabian for help. Fabian willingly agreed, and went around trapping Gideon's wild parchment hearts into a large sack so that they would not disturb other students.

During lunch, he sequestered the two of them in an unused classroom to read, as quickly as possible, all the messages that Gideon received. Fabian took this opportunity to ask if Gideon and Marlene were an item, to which Gideon sheepishly replied he had no clue.

"No idea? What do you mean no idea? It seems a matter of time to me. It is inevitable." Fabian said.

"Yes, well, what are the markers of an official relationship? What exactly are those things two people have to go through before they can call themselves a couple anyway?"

"The two of you have been really good friends for ages, Gideon."

"Yes, but maybe we want it that way."

"Do you?"

"Doesn't matter what I want. It has to be a mutual thing."

"Does she want to keep it friends only?"

Gideon shrugged.

"Well if she does then you should get over it! And if she doesn't, you should really do something about it. So, which is it?"

Gideon hemmed and hawed nervously.

"Fine then, be a right git!" Fabian huffed. He went back to reading Gideon's Valentine's messages.

 _Roses are red, violets are blue. Take off your shirt, and I will love you._ This message was blatantly signed off.

"This one's from Frank," Fabian said, passing the slip of parchment over.

"Listen to this," Gideon said, as he began to quote from another message. "I'm not in love with you, but I think you're in love with Frank Longbottom. If you would be so kind as to snog him in public, it would really mean a lot to me. It would nourish my poorly teenage heart and I will always think fondly of it as the best moment of my life."

"I second that," Fabian said, with a suggestive waggle of the eyebrows.

"You could do it for me. Pretend to be me and snog it out with Frank." Gideon laughed, and then there was an awkward pause in which Gideon didn't say anything but Fabian could almost hear him thinking—so little brother, are you really, honestly into boys?

"Yeah, yeah I'd like that," Fabian replied, looking straight into Gideon's eyes, hoping he would get the hint. "Doesn't mean you will."

"But we're identical," Gideon said. "If you are, does that mean I am too?"

Fabian's heart skipped a beat. He felt his throat get a bit dry. "Are you?"

"I don't think I am," Gideon said hesitantly. "Or maybe I am."

"You don't have to decide now, Gideon. You don't ever have to decide."

Gideon gave him a hug. "Thanks Fabe," he said.

Fabian smiled wanly and went back to reading the parchment hearts. He wanted to say, you don't ever have to decide because people will love you anyway. _We're not always identical._

"I'm sorry," Gideon said abruptly. "What you said to me—I really wish I could have said that to you first."

"It's okay," Fabian said, brightening up. "I know you love me no matter what."

"Yes, I do," said Gideon, breaking into that devastating, warm smile that only _he_ could give, the one that made any person feel like they were the only one in the world that mattered to him and the one that won him the hearts of so many.

Gideon pulled something out of his bag. It was a crumpled-up piece of papyrus, crudely cut into the shape of a heart. "This is for you, because they didn't have any papyrus versions up at the booth, and I thought they would have some because you're a prefect and all."

"No one cares about me but you, Gid," Fabian said half-jokingly.

Lunchtime was soon over and the twins parted for their separate lessons. Fabian didn't bother to read the message on the papyrus heart but left it in his pocket.

...

The rest of the school day passed in a pinkish blur, tinged by all the young lovelorn hearts of the student populace.

"You would think," Alice said, "that if they were truly serious about it they would be happy to confess their love on any other day, but no, somehow everyone in this school only ever falls in love at Valentine's."

Fabian nodded meekly.

Alice shot him a sharp look. "Are you in love too?" she demanded.

"Maybe I am," Fabian mumbled.

"Are you serious?" Alice asked, and from her expression Fabian could tell that she was perfectly serious in asking this question. Alice was the most straightforward person he knew, and perhaps also slightly less attuned to the emotions of others and was therefore unable to grasp when a person was showing signs of being in love.

"No," Fabian lied, knowing Alice would take his answer at face value.

Somewhere, Fabian thought, his love was prancing around the school halls trailed by pink parchment hearts, bathing in the adoration of others. He wasn't too sure if what he felt for Evan Rosier was truly love, but he knew that it made his insides hurt sometimes and other times it made his insides feel all mushy so it must be a kind of love.

After he was done with prep, Fabian decided to head back to Ravenclaw Tower for an early night when Evan Rosier accosted him.

"I have got something for you, my love! Come with me to my secret lair, and we shall eat, drink and be merry!"

The secret lair turned out to be the fifth floor loo, the site of their first snogging. From under his robes, Evan pulled out a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

" _Pour vous_ ," he said with a flourish.

Conjuring up another two glasses, he skillfully opened and poured the wine out to drink. Fabian unfurled the ribbon around the box of chocolates and dug in. Somehow, neither seemed to mind that they were eating and drinking in a loo.

"For your after dinner entertainment," Evan began flirtatiously, "would you like a striptease?"

Fabian choked on the chocolate truffle he had been nibbling on. "Pray tell, how is that remotely appropriate?"

"How," Evan countered with an open gesture, "is this bottle of wine appropriate? Yet you seemed quite happy to quaff it all."

Fabian failed to come up with any reasonable excuse, so he picked up the bottle of wine to observe its contents. It had a picture of a heart on its label.

"The name of this wine," Fabian said. "It's the Welsh word for heart. Is that coincidental?"

Evan shrugged. He seemed more preoccupied with preening in the mirror above the sink. "All I know is that it's from France," he said.


	12. Calon Lân

It was a picture of perfect serenity—untouched forest blooming into life after a cold, biting winter, coming into focus as the morning mist dissipated. Pools of sunlight pierced through the canopy of tall, rigid conifers with their needle-like leaves, dappling the loamy forest floor wet with a flush of morning dew on this crisp spring morning. A tiny creek gurgled merrily nearby, its crystal clear waters slipping through shards of ice that crackled and broke apart as it passed. A songbird began to sing, satisfied with the morning's breakfast offerings.

Suddenly, a disruption!

From the edge of the forest trudging footsteps were to be heard, a tiny pitter-patter of six-year old feet, and a chattering, from this same six-year old boy, who was, as it seemed, talking about something or another to an imaginary friend.

"So I went back to the pig sty this morning but found it all cleaned and the trough filled with feed and I had nothing left to do and I went to look for ma but she was headed off to work and da was in his workshop and he doesn't appreciate being interrupted much, so I headed to the farm, but Mrs Piggott told me that Gid had gone off to market with Farmer Piggott, and she honestly had no errands left for me to do, because Gid had done them all. That's why I'm here, I suppose. I don't fancy others find me useful much. I wish there was something I can do."

The six-year old boy was fiddling with a piece of straw in his hands.

"We're poor, I know that. I looked it up the dictionary so I know what it means, and I know that ma and da work so hard every day so they can put food on our table. Farmer Piggott lets us earn a bit of money too, by feeding the pigs and baby lambs but it's not a lot of work and my brother does it all so quick and he does it all. I'm the only one who sits around not earning any money. Yesterday I read one of Mrs Piggott's magazines and there was this sweet young songstress who used to be poor too, until she married some rich man, and now she has three children and lots of money. Do you think I could get married too? I could get married to a rich man and he will give ma and da loads of money and they will never have to work another day and they can read to us and tell us stories every day.

I don't know if Quidditch players are rich though, because I know that if there's anyone in the world I could marry it would be George. He's just out of the Puddlemere youth team, I know, and maybe he's a little bit older than me, but maybe, when I'm old enough for him we will fall in love and be married. Mrs Piggott keeps telling me that when I'm old enough to marry I will understand everything. I can't wait for that day! Imagine how exciting it would be, to wake up one day and know everything. How does it happen anyway? Or do you think I will find out too, on that day itself, the day I am old enough to get married."

The boy kept walking and babbling to himself, until he came upon a clearing where he saw the most upsetting sight. A clawed trap had been set by poachers, and trapped in its teeth was a small unicorn, young enough to still gleam of gold. The unicorn foal looked exhausted from trying to pry itself out of the trap, and could barely make a sound. Where were her parents? Fabian Prewett wondered, for he thought the unicorn looked like a her.

He quickly dashed to help the filly, who was bleeding from where the claws of the trap dug into her skin. The trap was tightly shut, and Fabian was not able to loosen it. If only he were old enough for his own wand, he thought. He then looked around, hoping he could call for help. He then realised that he had got himself lost in the woods, and for all he knew there was no one nearby who could hear him.

Panicked and helpless, he began to cry, and then saw that the unicorn had had its young horn ruthlessly sawed off, leaving in place a jagged nub. Unicorn parts, he knew, were extremely valuable potion ingredients, and because the old way of harvesting unicorn horns, by earning the trust and friendship of unicorns and then to take the horn only at a particular moulting age when the process would have been painless, was so painstaking and slow he had heard that poachers were increasingly choosing the expedient route of trapping and hurting these gentle creatures.

He felt so sad he reached out to touch the unicorn, who first shied away but soon realised that Fabian meant no harm. Fabian whispered to the unicorn to hang in there, and that he would find a way to keep her alive. He then asked if the unicorn was thirsty and she seemed to reply with a nod, so he immediately scampered off to get some water.

Fabian dashed to the gurgling creek, and found that he had no means of transporting the water. He then began looking for a plant with leaves large enough to hold water, but the only leaves to be found were just tiny buds yet to unfurl.

He looked down at his clothes. He knew that they could hold some water, but not for long as it would seep through. However, if he could run fast enough there would be enough left for the unicorn to sip.

And so he dashed back and forth in this manner, dipping the edge of his tunic into the creek until the water pooled to a sufficient level. At times he tripped and fell but he got back up as if nothing had happened and went back to the stream and collected water again.

He did this until it looked like the little unicorn was getting better. He then told her that he would be leaving for a short while to get help, but the farther he went the more lost he felt. It was as if the forest was shifting around him, its landscape changing so that he had no clue of the trail he took in entering. Despair began to creep into his thoughts, but then he found a healing plant that he once saw his mother grind into a powder and put on him when he was sick, and he picked off several leaves to bring to the unicorn.

It was getting dark, but from afar he could still see the soft, golden glow of the unicorn so he let the light guide him back to her. As he neared, he realised that the trap had gone and there was now a deep gash along her entire side.

Fabian nearly broke down in hysteria. It was his fault! He realised. It was his fault for leaving her side, and the poachers had returned to collect their trap and abandoned her to die. Fabian had an uneasy feeling that they probably collected her blood to sell as well, by the looks of that deep gash.

Fabian was disconsolate now. Weeping, he apologised over and over to the unicorn for abandoning her, and then he remembered the medicinal leaves and tried to put them over her wounds. He swore, in between sobs, that he would not leave her again and if those poachers ever got back he would tell them what an evil thing they had done, and they would see the error of their ways, and he would make them take her to the vet and then he would make them swear never to do any poaching ever again. He sobbed and sobbed, and then put his arms over the unicorn in a protective hug, and the unicorn nuzzled him in turn.

Tired from all the sobbing, Fabian uncontrollably fell asleep and was only awoken when the morning came and brought with it a search party of adults including his father. There was a shout that they had finally located Fabian, and even before he was fully awake he felt himself pulled from the unicorn.

Fabian began to kick and protest vehemently, for he had sworn to protect the unicorn and be by her side until she got better. His father, who had been the one to carry him off and away from the unicorn, broke it to him that the unicorn had passed away while he was sleeping.

There was no stopping Fabian now. He was beyond consolation and he screamed and kicked hysterically, accusing the adults of lying to him and that he needed to see the unicorn himself one last time. Through his blurry tears, which fell fat and warm down his freckled cheeks, he could see some other men throw a robe over the unicorn and lift her up and away. He felt like a failure, and he didn't want to be a failure. He thought to himself that if he could only get close to the unicorn she would wake again, and refused to accept anything his father tried to tell him.

He could sense his father getting angry at him, but that only made Fabian angrier at his father and kick and protest ever more vigorously. His father marched him back to their little cottage and almost accidentally threw him on the sofa out of frustration.

Fabian was wailing and accusing his dad of not letting him see the unicorn. He could see his siblings cower in a corner, for it was not often their father got angry like that.

"Do you know how much you made us worry," his father said through gritted teeth. "Running off into the woods by yourself. Look at how you've hurt yourself. Who knows what else might have happened?"

Fabian refused to calm down and started lashing out at his father. He accused his father of lying to him about the unicorn, and of being a tyrant, and of being a terrible father, and begged for his mother. His father stood over him for a long while, taking all this in with clenched fists, restraining himself with all he could from disciplining his son, and it was at that moment when Fabian's mother returned from her separate search party and rushed to Fabian's side to console him with kind and gentle words.

For hours Fabian refused to eat or drink and was put to bed early. He hated his father then, for being not at all like his mother, and for always stealing his mother from him, but then his father entered the room to tuck him in.

"I'm sorry I was angry at you earlier today, Fabian," his father said, leaning close to kiss his forehead. "I shouldn't have shouted at you."

Fabian continued to pretend he was asleep, because he was still angry at his father. He felt him tuck something into the crook of his arm, and only after he was sure his father had left the room did he take a look at it. It was a carved wooden unicorn that came to life when he caressed it and it settled down next to him.


	13. All Creatures Great and Small

Molly Weasley stared at the carved wooden unicorn she held in her arm. Fabian was always such a silly boy, she thought to herself. He had an incredible compassion for all creatures great and small and sometimes caused all sorts of problems for that reason.

Ron and Hermione were over at the Burrow for the usual Sunday roast, and they were trying to pry information out of Molly on the sly, without revealing to her the reasons for this investigation. They had been digging though the archives in the Auror department and found some old investigative papers hinting at suspicious activity on Fabian Prewett's part, and Ron Weasley was beginning to feel that this particular uncle of his was not at all what he had thought him to be, given the as-yet unexplained connection to Dolohov and the schoolboy romance with Rosier. If it came to light that Fabian did indeed have unsavory connections to the Death Eaters it could spell the end of his heroic reputation alongside his brother Gideon Prewett.

"What kind of problems did he cause?" Hermione prodded.

"Oh, I don't want to blame him at all, because he had such a pure heart, but he really could have been a pain if he wanted! I remember the time he decided to become vegetarian...."

"What happened there?"

"It was Christmas lunch and ma and da had prepared a feast for us, and considering what we usually had it was a wonderful feast. Alas, one of the main ingredients was this pig your Uncle Fabian had grown extremely fond of, and after finding out that his Christmas lunch was comprised of this pig, who was like a best friend to him, he went on a hunger strike for days and my goodness, the trouble! Each one of us tried countless ways to get him to eat again, and it was only after we convinced him that vegetables could not feel pain and were not murdered in cooking."

"Now that you mention it," Molly continued. "It was the only other time I remember da getting as angry as he did with the unicorn incident."

Ron mentioned that his grandfather sounded like a scary man, not the kind one would hope to cross at all.

Molly shook her head in reply. He was not like this often, she claimed, and he was a genuinely good father when he could be. He told the best stories and tried his best to take care of all his children.

"Stories?" Ron said, unable to reconcile the stern, stentorian image with that of a fanciful storyteller. "What kind of stories?"


	14. Once upon a time, there was a dragon

"Once upon a time, there was a dragon, red like the one in our flag, with scales that gleamed like rubies when the sun shone. Awoken by the miners from the mountains up above, she roamed the valleys of Glamorgan, where your mother's family lived. Your mother's brothers hunted down this dragon and locked her in a deep dungeon, which they later threw me in, because her family didn't like me."

Geraint Prewett looked into the eyes of his three young children, cuddled up against each other on the sofa across the fireplace.

"What did you do with the dragon, daddy?" the eldest boy asked. "Did you kill it?" 

Geraint saw the youngest boy shrink behind a cushion in fear. He poked at the fireplace with a poker, releasing a few dramatic sparks in the air. A slow smile crept into his face. "No," he began. "I saved the dragon, the dragon saved your mum, and your mum saved me."

...

[1945]

"Hellooooo nurse, I think I have a bit of an ache _down there_ , if you know what I mean. Mind lending a hand?"

Rhiannon Gower looked up from her clipboard, fixing a hard glare on the soldier. "I'm a medic, and unless by down there you mean your shattered collarbone you're fine." She moved onto the next patient, a youth barely come of age, with his limbs bandaged up most pitifully.

"What's up, doc?" this particular collection of bandages uttered, attempting to break into a half grin.

Rhiannon picked up the clipboard at this patient's foot. "Geraint Prewett," she said. "Welsh?" she said.

"Aye, from the Wye Valley."

"You don't look nearly old enough. Why did you join the Forces?"

"Sister, I was a poet but they've got no use for poets in war."

Rhiannon seemed to have no patience for idle chat. "How long have you been out there?"

"Not long, just two weeks in. Doubt I've had the time to get shell-shocked but have you seen what goes on in the trenches?" Geraint's face contorted into an expression of wide-eyed horror. There were many like him out cold on the battlefield, bodies pale and putrid from abandonment and injury. Most were young, too, like him, with unstarted lives that could be sacrificed at smaller cost.

"I've been a medic here for months."

Geraint was soon after sent back home for further treatment. A short while after, Grindelwald announced surrender and that was the extent of his stint on the western front,

He recovered well enough, much better than all the others who saw more death and devastation, better than those with images seared forever in their mind they would never recover from. He was not a violent man and would never have thrived in battle. Who knows what state he might have ended up in had he stuck around for more? But with what he saw from his brief two weeks the words ran dry in him and he had to make a new living some other way. He had also kept in contact with the pretty medic from the war and she mentioned that she might know someone who was looking for a groundskeeper.

He went for the job, and it was how he found that the pretty medic was the only daughter of a well-known family and that he would be working on the grounds of her family castle.

He had some qualms about the arrangement but just as soon came to ignore it as he began a secret love affair with Rhiannon Gower. This went on for several years without much in the way.

However, it came to pass that her family decided it was high time they married her off to a suitable man who was strategically chosen, by her three brothers and her grandmother and her mother, for his family fortune. All the old families were on a downward spiral, financially speaking, and all were scampering to trade high birth for wealthy connections.

This man was to arrive on invitation of the family, who were looking to put forth their daughter as a suitable wife. There was no expense spared in the preparation for his arrival, and the highlight of the trip was to be a dragon hunt, followed by a hunt ball and so on.

Rhiannon, who had absolutely no intention of marrying a stranger, much less a stranger who, by all accounts, was the opposite of what she looked for in a partner, naturally reacted with stubbornness and was uncooperative.

She informed Geraint that she had decided it would be best for her to elope with him before her hand was promised to another. Geraint, seized by a sudden bout of rationality, tried to argue that theirs was an affair that was not meant to last, and she should give this stranger a chance because he would never be able to provide for her in the same way. Rhiannon grew annoyed and said she had no intention of being "provided for", and that she would never let him get away with breaking her heart, so he should really get packing and be ready to leave at any moment.

As is the beloved sport of the ruling class, as old George had done all those years ago, dragon hunting was the ultimate show of sporting prowess and noblesse oblige, as wizards and witches dressed for the field and set off on flying horses, armed with enchanted weapons to slay the monstrous, ugly beasts and protect the ordinary folk from harm.

In actual fact, dragons were all too content to keep to their mountains in undisturbed slumber, but recent mining activity woke them and forced them out of their homes. The proceeds from mining only served to enrich the already rich, and their growing display of affluence only served to bait the dragons into fury. In turn the rich and privileged turned to dragon hunting for sport, which only entrenched their privileged position as they began to call themselves heroes and protectors, defending their people and their land from terrible destruction.

On this occasion, with much for show, a magnificent dragon was captured in the hunt and beat into submission. She had all the markings of a Welsh Green, save that she had a rare genetic quirk that meant she was born red.

This dragon was imprisoned in the castle dungeons while the family began celebrations in honour of the invited guest. To top things off, a nest of gleaming, golden dragon eggs were found, and these were polished and set on the dining table as the perfect centrepiece. Over dinner, Rhiannon could no longer stand being talked about as if she were property to be handed off after a successful contract negotiation and abruptly declared that she had no intention of marrying one she did not choose.

Her brothers began to talk over her, assuring the guest that she was probably in a silly mood, because that's how women are, they never mean what they say, and Rhiannon grew so incensed with rage she stood up at the table, accidentally kicking into it and tipping the soup tureen over. The dragon eggs wobbled from the shock, and, dislodged, began rolling to the edge of the table. Sensing danger, Rhiannon swiftly dove to collect them before they fell off. Hot soup began to seep into the tablecloth and down onto various laps, prompting a few restrained howls of pain. Amidst the ensuing chaos Rhiannon declared that all this while she had been having an affair with the groundskeeper, whom she had every intention to marry tonight after eloping.

"My dear sister," her eldest brother said. "Your faculties must be impaired because you have just ruined any chance of your escape."

Another brother smirked. "Arrest the groundskeeper, and throw him in with the dragon," he ordered.

Rhiannon withdrew her wand and prepared to duel with her brother but found herself unexpectedly disarmed by her mother.

"You have been most unladylike," her mother began. "You have done nothing but inconvenienced our guest and you have put forth a most unpleasant disposition. Go now, to your room, before you further embarrass yourself."

"Fine," she said. "I will go to my room. I will go to my room and prepare to leave this house forever. I will be gone before the night is up, you mark my words!"

She stormed up into her room, but as she slammed the room door shut behind her she saw a burst of deep purple light at its seams and realised she had been sealed in by one of her family.

She dashed to the window before it could be locked by enchantment, but her second brother flew past on a broom and he threw her back with a stunning spell and shut the window on her.

She pulled herself up off the floor, refusing to be defeated, and tried to gather her thoughts to hatch an escape plan. Hatch...she thought, suddenly remembering that the two golden dragon eggs that she had dragged along with her. She stared at the eggs, wondering how the dragonlings inside were coming along. If they were due to hatch now, she thought, she could have them burn through the door or even the wrought iron windows and she could make a run for it.

After several minutes of staring, she decided that the eggs weren't going to hatch after all, and went about packing a suitcase of her favorite things.

...

For no comprehensible reason he had been seized and he now found himself being dragged to the dungeons. The dungeons were dark and damp and he could barely see a thing, much less his captors.

There was an unlocking, and he was brusquely thrown to the ground before the captors quickly slammed the gate shut and dashed away as if running for their lives.

Warning bells began to sound in his head. There must be something mightily unpleasant in here, he concluded. He looked around and saw slivers of moonlight knife through a vent. He moved towards the light, hoping it would help him see. He barely took one step before he tripped and fell over a hard boulder. He felt around for the boulder to steady himself, and found that the boulder had these rough ridges that felt like scales and then it dawned upon him—he had been shut in with the dragon caught earlier today.

When he looked up he saw the glint of a giant eye, large as a dinner plate. Even in the sparse light the eyes shone like yellow sapphires.

"I'm sorry!" Geraint exclaimed, throwing his hands up as if to surrender. "I didn't mean to trip over you."

The dragon seemed unimpressed and snorted dismissively.

"I'm so sorry," Geraint said again. He then sat down on the spot, but found he had lowered himself into a puddle of indeterminate liquid.

The dragon continued snorting in a supercilious manner.

Uncomfortable with the silence, Geraint began talking. "I'm sorry you don't like me much, but I'm stuck with you for now, unless you decide to eat me." He belatedly realised his error and began to laugh nervously. "But you don't intend to eat me, do you?"

The dragon made no reply.

"Aww," Geraint began to coo. "You're not in pain are you?" Unthinkingly, he reached out to pat the dragon in a comforting gesture.

At his touch, the dragon recoiled and began to cough in a hacking manner.

"Oh no," Geraint began to fret. "Are you alright, love?" He patted the dragon ever more fervently.

The dragon began to make a whining sound.

"Oh dear, oh deary me," Geraint babbled uselessly. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

The dragon bobbed its large reptilian head.

"You understand me!" Geraint exclaimed, upon which the dragon seemed to shake its head.

"Is there anything I can do?" Geraint pressed. The dragon bobbed its head up and down.

"Yes? Yes?" Geraint nodded enthusiastically, mirroring the dragon.

The dragon bobbed its head up and down more vigorously this time. Confused, Geraint moved closer to see if there was anything he could do. When he stood in front of the dragon, he felt a damp gust of cold air.

He pondered for a while. It seemed to him that dragons, who could breathe fire from the nostrils, would not produce damp and cold air. He tried to look up the dragon's nostril. The dragon responded by turning up her nostril for a better angle, so Geraint stuck his head inside, but all was dark.

His hands reached up into a damp, spongy texture, which he began to feel around. He then realised that Everwetting Sponges had been stuffed up the dragon's nostrils to keep her from breathing fire. Maybe the dragon had been snorting in discomfort after all!

With a firm grasp, he tried to dislodge the sponge. He heaved and yanked and finally it came out with a pop. He gave the dragon a triumphant grin, holding the Everwetting Sponge out for her to see. The dragon rolled her head around so that he could work on the other nostril, and he dove in for the second extraction.

When he was done, the dragon gave a huge sneeze, which splattered Geraint with large droplets of water, and then she sneezed again, a drier sneeze this time around, with a lick of flame darting out of her nostril, enough to singe Geraint's flame-coloured hair.

He drew back instinctively, and was about to propose an escape plan when the dragon breathed into the vent, and then flapped her large, leathery wings, which were still bound by chains.

"All right, all right," Geraint huffed, and then went about trying to loosen the chains. Before he could even get the chains properly off, the dragon blew a hole into the ceiling and flew upwards with such a force that the chains were pulled from the dungeon walls. With another huge flap of the wings, the dragon took off far beyond him, and Geraint realised too late that he should have hitched a ride, because the dungeon was too deep for him to climb out and the escape hole was in the ceiling.

...

Her bags packed, Rhiannon went back to devising her escape plan. She lay on her bed above the covers, still in her evening dress, with her hands folded tightly across her chest.

Suddenly, there was a loud crashing sound and she felt the foundations of the castle beginning to give way. This was her opportunity! She leapt out of bed and grabbed her suitcase. She looked at her doorframe, and with another crash it went askew and the door popped off its hinges. She swung the door open, only to be faced with her eldest brother, so she swung a fist into his face and grabbed his wand. She ran down the hall, surrounded by cries that the dragon had gone loose.

 _The dragon!_ Her first conclusion was that somehow Geraint had found a way to break out of the dungeons and he was probably riding atop the dragon, hair blowing heroically in the wind. She ran to the nearest window, and with a blast from her wand she sent out a signal to catch the dragon's eye.

The dragon was swooping around the castle, burning turrets into the ground. The chains that had bound her were now flailing around loosely, thrashing into the castle walls and causing much damage. It seemed the dragon was not willing to simply leave, but was intent on exacting revenge.

Or was it? Rhiannon remembered the unhatched eggs that were still sitting on her bed. The dragon wasn't trying to wreak senseless destruction, she must have been looking for her eggs!

She dashed back towards her room. At the doorway her brother, who was just coming to, reached out and tried to trip her, but she deftly leapt to avoid his outstretched arm and decided to give him a kick for good measure.

She scooped up the eggs, but the ceiling was crumbling all around her and if the eggs were to get damaged now, Lord knows how the dragon would react. Rhiannon looked down at her suitcase. If she could fit the eggs inside they would be safe for now...

But her suitcase was full. Never mind, she thought, and flung it open and began dumping its contents. Her beautifully crafted robes were thrown to the floor, and her favourite books, and the rest of her belongings until she came to her precious violin, which was in a case of its own. She took the violin case out and the suitcase was now empty. She put the eggs inside and closed it and, with her violin case in the other hand, got up and left the room.

She rushed down the stairs until she hit her next obstacle, her third brother, who shot a spell at her. She raised her suitcase—then stopped herself—and raised her violin case to deflect the blow. The violin case shattered, and her violin too—an incredibly rare antique handmade by—oh hell, she thought. It's gone now. Finished. Best not dwell.

She got to the ground floor and out of the castle and opened the suitcase to show the dragon that her eggs were safe.

The dragon began to swoop down for her eggs, and it was then Rhiannon noticed that Geraint was not heroically riding atop her like she had imagined. The dragon had reached the ground and was about to collect her eggs...

And then Rhiannon slammed the suitcase shut, staring straight at the dragon.

"Where is he?" she asked in a steady tone. She could feel the heat from the dragon's breath slam into her.

The dragon stared back at her.

"Take me to him," Rhiannon demanded. "And then I will let you have your eggs."

The dragon huffed, possibly out of indignation, and then lowered itself. Rhiannon mounted herself in one swift motion, taking the suitcase with her, and then they were off.

It wasn't a very long journey as the dragon merely dipped back into the dungeon, where Rhiannon found her lover sitting dejectedly, head propped up by one hand. He also looked to be covered in snot and his lovely hair seemed singed.

"Hop on," Rhiannon commanded imperiously.

At her voice, Geraint looked up with an expression of such joy she broke into a grin herself.

"You saved me!" Geraint simpered, clambering on behind her and burying his head into her hair. "And you too!" he said to the dragon, with a little pat.

The dragon snorted and hurtled into the sky, dodging beams of spells cast to hinder her escape.

Far below them, Rhiannon's grandmother was screeching ferociously. "Curses!" she yelled. "Curses!" They began to laugh, for they believed themselves safe now, but then they heard her words.

"A curse upon your heads!" she continued. "A curse is upon you, for you have defied the wishes of your family to seek the one you love. For this freedom you enjoy was not yours to have and this freedom you rob from future generations. May your offspring never be free to marry the one they truly love..."


	15. Come Away With Me

"Yes!" Ron exclaimed. "They ran away from evil and lived happily ever after!"

Molly sighed. She had omitted the part about the curse in her retelling of the story to her children, just as her father had omitted telling her about this curse until he was on his deathbed and then it was only in his dying breath. From her father to her the burden became hers to carry, and it came to bear down on her most bitterly when her two brothers died.

Ron looked at her, concerned. "They did live happily ever after, didn't they?" he asked, seeking an answer he had a feeling he might not find.

"For a while, yes," Molly replied. "For as long as your grandmother was alive we were as happy as we could be. It wasn't easy for them, because they had eloped and your grandmother was cut off from the family inheritance and your grandfather was poor to begin with."

"If you came from a happy family," Ron said, "why then did you and dad have to elope, too?"

Molly gave Ron a bemused look, revealing that it was one of her fonder memories, albeit bittersweet.

...

It was incredibly difficult, not having any resources, to raise a family well. Rhiannon was blacklisted by her family, lost all her former connections and was even expelled from Healing school. From then, they moved from town to town, taking whatever work they could find there. In this way they lived frugally, until one day the news came to them that an elderly writing mentor of Geraint's had recently passed, and his old cottage was to be rented out at a cheap rate in order to pay down the mountain of debt he left behind.

It was also at this time that Rhiannon began to find regular employment as a violin teacher. Geraint, who, besides a love of literature, was also good with his hands, took up woodworking, building bookshelves for the nearby town. With their living arrangement secured and income trickling in slowly but surely, they decided to have a child.

Now, neither had forgotten the curse Rhiannon's grandmother put on them, so their decision to have a child did not come lightly. They both agreed that they would do all in their power to break this curse, so that this child should one day have the same happiness in love they enjoyed.

The child was born, a sweet-faced baby girl, who had a bubbling laugh and a kind heart and brought her patents much joy. They lived as a happy trio until, as accidents of this sort occasionally happen, Rhiannon was pregnant with another.

This another soon turned out to be two, for Rhiannon was found to be carrying twins. There was a private fear that this was much more than they could handle, but dear Molly was so pleased with the prospect of younger siblings they decided that they would find a way to cope.

And coped they did until the day Rhiannon was diagnosed with dragon pox. The loss of one source of income made the burden of household expenses ever larger, although thanks to the Magical Heath Service, Rhiannon was not denied the healthcare she needed and medical bills were not a problem.

Rhiannon never recovered from the dragon pox and it ultimately led to her death. Geraint took the news especially hard. It was as if a part of him had died as well, and he was never to recover from the depression that stuck with him after.

He was, not to say, a terrible father, but any person in the throes of mental illness could scarce be able to get by on a daily basis. By that time, Molly had begun her education at Hogwarts and wrote often to her little brothers, asking them to be patient and understanding with their father, who could spend days on end huddled up under his duvet, locked in his room.

The quality of his work declined too, when the pressure of having rent and bills to pay became so great he had no choice but to drag himself to the workshop to haphazardly cobble some planks together.

It went on and on, falling into a soulless, dreary routine, until the day a stranger knocked on the door.

It was not just any stranger, but the wealthy wizard Rhiannon's parents had wanted her to marry!

The wizard stepped into the house, surveying the shabby surroundings. He could barely conceal his smugness at the plight of this family. He revealed himself to be the ultimate owner of the cottage as well as the surrounding land, and, in a show of false magnanimity meant to demonstrate his power over them, he declared that he would spare this family their debt and award them the title to this cottage if they should give him what he had been denied all those years ago—a wife.

Yes, he had heard that Rhiannon had long left this world but it was not Rhiannon he wanted any longer, for even if she had lived she would be a ghastly old hag by now. He wanted for himself a young and pretty wife, and he had heard that they had a daughter, who was by and large rumoured to be the school belle.

The words incited Geraint into life, as he grew animated by a violent anger. He would never promise his daughter away as if she were chattel and he would never let his daughter, his precious firstborn, become the unhappy wife of a greedy old man who was sure not to accord her due respect.

However, this wizard then brandished a piece of parchment in his face, a contract signed by the late literary mentor, so poorly drawn and exploitative as to implicate any resident of the land no matter if they had not signed it themselves.

Geraint had no prior knowledge of this contract, but knew he had to act decisively. To stall for time, he informed the wizard that his daughter had not yet come of age, for her seventeenth birthday had not yet come. The wizard eyed him beadily and stated that he had the patience, and would return in just over a month, on Molly's seventeenth birthday, to claim her for himself.

It was then Geraint felt like an absolute failure, for that which he had agreed with Rhiannon to prevent was coming true. He had spent all this time moping and hating himself and he had neglected to care for his children when they needed him, and should this unholy union proceed under his watch he would surely fall into the ranks of the utterly reprehensible.

He wrote to Molly in school, informing her in no uncertain words about the danger she was in. He had spent several hours thinking of possible solutions, and the only one he had been able to come up with was of uprooting the entire family to a faraway place such as Australia.

Molly replied that she would give it some thought on her side. The thought of dropping out of school to be married to some stranger whom she hated the sound of was causing great anxiety, and her sometime boyfriend, Arthur Weasley, noticed her worry.

Trusting Arthur enough to confide in him, she told Arthur of the conundrum she faced. Arthur, without a thought, suggested that the two of them could get married first, in which case the villainous old wizard would be thwarted.

Molly chided Arthur for being ridiculous, for they were both still in school. But as soon as she dismissed it she began to realise it might be worth consideration after all. They had been going out for the better part of two years, and she realised that her dream future was one in which Arthur featured strongly.

They discussed it over several nights, and then they decided that this was the option they both could live with. They made plans for Geraint to go up to Hogsmeade, so that they could inform him of this plan and ask for his blessing, and also to do so in a manner that would not be intercepted by that fiend.

Fortunately, Geraint and Arthur took well to each other and he found Arthur a respectful person who would not shirk his responsibilities to Molly and any children they saw fit to have.

He agreed for them elope from Hogwarts on a school night to rendezvous at a small chapel in Arthur's hometown, where they would be married at the stroke of midnight.

The twenty ninth of November rolled around and after most others had gone to sleep, Arthur and Molly quietly roused to make their escape. Arthur was nearly thwarted by patrolling prefects as he tiptoed down the hall. Bellatrix Black and Rodolphus Lestrange were on the night patrol, and they were discussing various ways to inflict punishment on students for breaking school rules. Arthur jumped behind a suit of armour to hide, painfully aware that precious time was being lost.

Somehow, Black and Lestrange would not leave the hall! They had also worked themselves into a sadistic frenzy with their imagined punishments for students. Arthur was beginning to get cramps in his arms from holding an awkward position wedged between the suit of armour and the wall. Next to him, through the open window, in blew a gust of chilly autumn wind down the hall.

_That's it!_ He waited until Black and Lestrange had their backs turned, and then quickly shot a small spark out the window, an emergency call to let Molly know he would be late.

A short while after, he saw Molly speeding towards the window from the outside on a broom. If she came any closer the prefects would spot her! He felt around his pockets for his wand, and discovered an uneaten exploding gobstopper. _A diversion!_ He tried to unwrap the gobstopper as silently as possible, which in the quiet night seemed to insist on crinkling noisily. He gave it a hearty lick, to activate the exploding properties, and then flung it in the general direction of the prefects.

Several seconds later, it exploded in a giant puff of strawberry-flavoured powder, allowing him the one chance to leap out of the window unnoticed. He fell into the cold autumn night, air whooshing past at an alarming speed, but he was not worried. He knew with certainty that Molly would catch him on time, which she did as if this was the most ordinary thing in the world.

They arrived at the village chapel where Geraint and a small gathering of Arthur's family had showed up. Arthur's mother had dug up her old wedding dress for Molly to wear, and Arthur's brothers all chipped in with a different component of a dress robe.

Geraint slipped off his wedding ring, which he had never once taken off before, and together with Rhiannon's old ring, which he had also kept with him since she died, passed them over to the chaplain for Molly and Arthur to be married with.

The wedding ceremony was about to begin when there came the ominous sound of a carriage coming to a stop outside the chapel.

That dastardly villain had turned up! Dressed in all finery, he proudly took out the contract and announced that he was here to see it fulfilled.

There was a hush, and then Geraint spoke up. He challenged the cursed wizard to a duel, that he could only do it over his dead body.

The wizard was all too happy to agree. He proved to be a formidable opponent, well skilled in the art of the duel. Meanwhile, Geraint strove to take the duel outside, and motioned to the Weasley family that they should see that Arthur and Molly were wed before the duel was over.

The wizard began to taunt him. He told Geraint that he heard that he was useless in the war, stupidly injuring himself even before he took on a real foe. Geraint had no experience in battle to boast of, and it was foolish of him to think he could stand up to someone of his rank. How could he even put up a fight?

Geraint countered with all his heart that he would show that dastardly villain what a fight truly meant. To fight, he said, is not to wreak violence and destruction upon hapless victims for the sake of showing power. To fight is to believe in something so strongly as to do anything possible to vindicate that belief. And what Geraint fought for here, what he truly believed in, was for the right of his children to marry one of their own choosing.

The two wizards traded blows. Sparks from curses and spells fell from their wands, bursts of light in the dark night. From the chapel there was the sound of a tune being played on the organ, to conclude the ceremony. At this point Geraint stopped the fight. He was not dueling to prove a point, he was merely holding the wizard off for as long as necessary to get Molly and Arthur wed.

Thwarted, the villainous wizard began to scream, and then jumped into his carriage and blazed off swearing revenge upon revenge. Wounded from the fight, Geraint fell to the floor dramatically just as a happy crowd burst from the chapel.

He was rushed to the hospital, and while they were there, it transpired that the dastardly wizard was involved in a deadly collision with muggle aircraft as he had whipped his flying horses into a frenzy spurred on by his rage. Thankfully, the horses survived and were adopted into hospital service, where they found a much kinder home.

At this point, Molly and Arthur were reminded that they had to return to Hogwarts before dawn, but, due to Geraint's hospitalisation, Molly would be able to seek leave from school to visit him the next day. As their marriage was under wraps, Arthur could not do the same.

They arrived back at Hogwarts at around four in the morning, and went separate ways to sneak back into dorm, which Molly did with success, but Arthur was caught by Apollyon Pringle and sent to detention the next day.

Professor Dumbledore was very sympathetic upon hearing the news and granted Molly, along with her two brothers, who were just in their first year, leave from school to see their ailing father.

In the hospital, Healers informed her that Geraint's condition had deteriorated and they should prepare for the worst. Gideon and Fabian had no knowledge of the previous night's events and burst upon tears at the frightful sight, so a mediwitch herded them out of the room to calm down. It was then Geraint told Molly of her great-grandmother's curse and asked her to look after her brothers. He apologised for being a terrible father and for an incorrigible weakness, for if Rhiannon had lived and he died first she would not have crumbled like he did, and confessed that he had been entertaining thoughts of suicide up until he was jolted into saving her from a forced marriage. Bitterly, he wept to Molly and begged that she would think better of him than just a mentally-ill father.

It was then Molly began to cry, and, holding her father's hands, rough and ragged from years of woodworking, said she felt sorry that he thought of himself that way. He was not for once her mentally-ill father but many things to her, some of it good and some of it imperfect but he was wholly a human being she loved and respected, especially after what he did for her in the past month.

Geraint told her that he wished he could think of himself that way too, and he also saw that Molly had blossomed into maturity. Most other people reach a late stage of adulthood before they finally accept that their parents are neither incorruptible heroes nor pernicious villains, but just as raw and in need of forgiveness as any other. Molly he could entrust with the care of their family.

At this point, the mediwitch ushered the little Prewett twins, who had ceased sobbing, back into the room, where they said their last goodbyes.


	16. This was something special, this was just like dynamite

Having come across some recently unclassified reports regarding the conduct of Fabian Prewett during his time in the Auror service, Ron Weasley was increasingly worried that he had a wayward uncle who fell to the dark side.

Hermione suggested that they should pursue this further, and on their regular trips to the Burrow for family dinners they asked Molly if she ever noticed that Fabian had any Slytherin friends.

It was at this dinner that Ginny announced she was selected for the national team in the upcoming Quidditch Euros. She was immediately congratulated by all her brothers in the typical Weasley way, which is to say she found herself buried under five sweaty men in a pile of enthusiastic hugs.

Harry looked around modestly, and made a remark that BAHWAGs were banned from the training camp and it would be a long lonely summer for him and the children.

When they were clearing up the dishes, Molly suddenly told Hermione that she recalled this particular episode where Fabian seemed to be hanging around the Black family quite a bit.

"Was it in his fifth year?" Hermione asked in reply.

"It was after fifth year. In fact, it took place at the time of the Quidditch Euros, but in nineteen seventy two. Gideon had been selected to train with the Cannons all summer and he earned some tickets to the Euros as a bonus for being the most diligent player in the youth squad. He took the whole family along, and it was quite a lark. It was the last time Wales managed to get into the final, and nearly all of Hogwarts had turned out in support..."

...

The seas began to part and a great ship burst out of the seas, breaking the horizon. With an unmistakable honk it steered into the Port of Genoa. As it neared, it became apparent it was not so much a ship as it was a giant luxury yacht, adorned with elaborate nautical carvings that shifted and transformed in response to the waves. The yacht went into dock, and out from its plush innards spilled a colourful tangle of the wizarding world's most storied families.

The yacht had been chartered by Edward Tonks ( _yes, of the Salem Tonks_ ), who, as everyone knew, was heir to that vast New World fortune. Born to an American father and an English mother, he spoke with a sophisticated mid-Atlantic accent that charmed the socks off Cygnus and Druella Black. It was readily apparent that he was in pursuit of their second daughter's hand in marriage, and his flawless reputation in Hogwarts, first as a gracious Slytherin prefect, then the superbly exemplary Head Boy, filled Cygnus and Druella with an excitement that this man should be so perfect for their daughter.

He had spared no expense, so that even members of the famously exclusive Lestrange clan were willing to join the festivities onboard. Some might say that this was an intolerable gathering of the upper classes, conspicuously showing off their privilege in this most glorious of cities.

Italy was host to the 1972 European Quidditch Championship, and Genoa was host to the final. Wales were an unexpectedly good team this year, barging into the finals where they were to face the ruthless Yugoslavia.

The city, once awash with culture, was now awash with Quidditch fans from the British Isles and the Eastern Bloc, bringing with it some political tension as students of Hogwarts and the impenetrable Durmstrang clashed over values.

One day, some Durmstrangians were found to be bullying a small Hufflepuff boy barely out of first year. By chance, the person who discovered this act of bullying was one Gideon Prewett, and when he sought to interfere the Durmstrang students challenged him to a Quidditch match. Gideon Prewett, something of a Quidditch maniac, agreed before learning too late that the impromptu match would be officiated by Nemanja Illic, keeper of the Yugoslavian National Team, which meant there was very likely to be referee bias. Their chance of victory dimmed even further when it was rumoured that Nemaja Illic was the brother of one of the Durmstrang team.

Charged with assembling a team in just fifteen minutes, Gideon ran off in search of his fellow Hogwarts students. Having given much thought in his spare time to the formation of a Hogwarts dream team, he was beyond overjoyed at being able to actually assemble it.

He knew he wanted Frank Longbottom and Dorcas Meadowes as Chasers, alongside, humbly, himself. Marlene McKinnon and Alistair Thomas as Beaters, Evan Rosier as Seeker and as for Keeper, well, he'd take anyone he could find.

Marlene was easy to find, as was Frank. Both then went off to spread word of the informal match, gathering the rest of the Hogwarts crowd for support. Gideon ran off into his tent to fetch his broomstick, where he saw his brother suddenly sit up in alarm, inexplicably without a shirt, patting around his curiously lumpy duvet nervously.

"Golly, Gid, please do not dash unannounced into our room," Fabian moaned.

"No time to lose!" Gideon huffed. "I've got a team to assemble!"

"By gosh, is two-a-side Quidditch so urgent?" Fabian asked sarcastically.

"No time to lose!" Gideon repeated mindlessly. "It's Hogwarts vs Durmstrang in the match of the century!" He emitted a high-pitched squeal of excitement. "I've got a team to assemble! Full-strength, my dear brother!"

Gideon then sped out of the room muttering about tactics to himself.

Almost as soon as the tent was vacated, there was a rustling from under Fabian's duvet. Evan Rosier emerged, hair wildly askew, and emphatically unclothed. "A Quidditch match? Team Hogwarts?" he exclaimed. His eyes began to dart about frantically as he entertained the thought.

Before Fabian could even sigh, dismayed by all this interruption to his afternoon hijinks, Evan Rosier had leapt out of bed and was frantically reversing his disrobement, carelessly and indiscreetly running out of the tent, calling out after Gideon.

Gideon whipped his head around to see a dishevelled Evan Rosier running after him. _Where did he come from?_ Gideon wondered. He had been trying in vain to find Hogwarts' star Seeker and here he was right behind him.

"I hear you are assembling a team," Rosier wheezed in excitement.

Suspicion danced about Gideon's mind. There was something not right about the direction from which he emerged—never mind, he thought. He had Rosier on his team and they were ready to go.

The final team, comprising of two from each house except Ravenclaw, who had their Keeper the Australian Kim Gladstone as their sole representative, gathered at the training field for kick-off.

It was at this point they faced the Durmstrang team and realised they were probably, hopelessly, ridiculously outmatched player for player. The sheer physicality of the Durmstrang team was enough to beat them into submission, and truth be told the House of Ravenclaw was quite rubbish at the whole sporting lark and their Keeper was getting thoroughly thrashed.

It was with embarrassment that Fabian, who was vociferously lending his support, realised that his house was letting the school down. To his surprise, he found Alice Giggs in the crowd, yelling at their house Keeper to keep on trying. He sidled up to her and expressed his shock at seeing her here. Was she not vehemently anti-Quidditch? Why should she deign to grace such an event with her divine omniscience?

Alice told him to shut up and support the team. Besides, she said, her mother was originally Italian and the Euros presented a wonderful opportunity for her mum to take on a respectable job as a tour guide.

Team Hogwarts was really struggling out there. Fabian looked up into the sky with despair as he saw his brother get slammed into, yet again in an obvious foul that the ref didn't call out.

Fabian hurled a colourful insult at the ref for doing a shoddy job, accompanied with a rude gesture. He looked at the scoreboard, which was a dismal sight. All around him, Hogwarts students were gathering round in horror, until that young Hufflepuff boy Caradoc Dearborn, the purported bully victim, begged for all of them to begin singing the school song.

There was a sudden burst of fervour as the mass of Hogwarts students broke into discordant tune. It seemed to throw Team Durmstrang off its rhythm, as they looked slightly alarmed by the cacophony of voices below. The students grew ever wilder in their individual renditions of the song, until a deep, low harmony began to cut through it. Durmstrang were singing their school song back at them! And they sounded marvellous, like a singular deep boom echoing in the mountains. This show of unity, and perhaps uniformity, really incited the Hogwarts student body further, and they began screeching in their multitude. Fabian turned to his side in amazement as he heard, for the first time in his life, Alice's voice in song. Alice Giggs! Singing! Alice Giggs, the self-confessed oxymoronic non-singing Welshperson, who, at the start of every single year, mouthed all the words voicelessly at the start of term in the Great Hall. Alice saw him gawping at her in shock, and she gave him such a wide grin and grabbed his arm so tightly Fabian thought she must have been possessed. But her excitement was infectious and Fabian resumed singing, swinging an arm around her in a hug. Alice was so giddy and unlike her usual self that she put her other arm around the student on her other side, and soon all Hogwarts began to link arms and sing in one big caterwauling disharmony. There was a swell of emotion that rose and rose until they began to drown out the regimented Durmstrang chant, and then there was this one point, a point of pure magic, where all the Hogwarts contingent hit the same note at the same time, and they began to sustain it and in that moment Kim Gladstone made the most spectacular save of her entire Quidditch career to keep the score 90-340, Gideon Prewett threaded the Quaffle through the narrowest gap in the Durmstrang defence to Frank Longbottom who did a feign and a quick nudge to Dorcas Meadowes who slotted it neatly into goal, and at the same time Alistair Thomas sent a Bludger to Marlene McKinnon, who hit it onward to thwart the path of the Durmstrang Seeker in hot pursuit of Evan Rosier, who scooped up the snitch that was fluttering within sight.

Pandemonium broke out. There was a pitch invasion by the Hogwarts contingent, overcome with emotion at this hallowed victory. Durmstrang, for the most part, withdrew swiftly, all while claiming that the victory had no credibility because the match was too informal for it to matter anyway and that only people so unaccustomed to success would celebrate as they did.


	17. Marlene and Gideon

The actual championship final was slightly underwhelming in light of Hogwarts' glorious victory. Both teams took an overly cautious approach so there was not much excitement, and both teams were also evenly matched in a deadlock that depended on the capture of the Golden Snitch for the final outcome.

With luck, Wales nudged it and won the match to much relief. Quidditch maniacs like Gideon Prewett had staked so much emotionally he was just relieved it turned out the way he hoped for.

After the trophy presentation, the Wales captain mentioned that she had heard of an impromptu Quidditch match that happened because the students of Hogwarts stood up to an act of bullying, and that she would like to meet the person who made it happen, whereupon Gideon nearly swooned into Fabian's arms.

Soon, people started chanting for Gideon Prewett. Gideon, all sheepish smiles and shuffling feet, said he felt embarrassed because this was wholly a team effort, so then people began chanting "Hogwarts Hogwarts Hogwarts" and Gideon recovered from his swooning to reach out to Marlene McKinnon with a puppylike expression. Marlene smiled, and beckoned the rest of Team Hogwarts to follow them, and meanwhile Evan Rosier beamed at Fabian with the proudest expression of his life. Gideon picked out Caradoc Dearborn, the bullied first year Hufflepuff, and the group of them went up the podium to a host of cheers.

Gideon was asked to say something, as someone cast the Sonorous on him, to which he began, looking like he was on the verge of tears, "yeah... uh... so..."

It was at this point Marlene McKinnon grabbed his face and kissed him and the entire stadium started whooping.

"Oh god... Merlin..." Gideon babbled audibly, the Sonorous charm still broadcasting his incoherence for all to hear. With a great big gasp, he collapsed into a shaking pile of tears.

The Wales team captain found Gideon's emotional outburst particularly endearing, and went on to hug him and the rest of the Hogwarts team for a job well done.


	18. Somewhere beyond the sea

Evan Rosier begged Fabian to join him on a tour of Europe after the Quidditch Euros. He put it across in delicate terms, aware of Fabian's foremost consideration, that the incremental charge of hosting Fabian was barely noticeable when they would be sharing a room and such, so Fabian need not feel guilty about letting him foot the bill.

Fabian dawdled, pointing out that he had no way of explaining his absence or how he could justify such a vacation without revealing the nature of their relationship to his sister and brother.

Evan, in turn, put on a quick succession of pleading faces, ranging from puppy eyes to a spoiled princess pout. Fabian eventually gave in and said he would come up with a suitable excuse. As they were all packing to leave, he pulled Alice aside to ask if she would lend support to his fabrications that her mother was in need of extra staff on the tour and on Alice's suggestion, he was temporarily employed for the role. Alice agreed on the terms that he revealed to her his true itinerary, to which she responded with such goggly eyes if she opened them any wider her eyeballs would simply roll out of their sockets.

The harmless fib settled, Fabian bade goodbye to his family as he saw them off at the Portkey. Shortly after, he packed his bags and said farewell to dear Alice, planting a large, wet kiss on her round, rosy cheeks.

He was about to set sail on the Ulysses, the largest recreational yacht this side of the wizarding world. He would spend the next fortnight on the high seas of the Mediterranean, sailing from port to port, ensconced in opulence.

Hosted ever so generously by Ted Tonks, Fabian, who was introduced as a school friend of Narcissa and Evan's, experienced some of the most sumptuous food and wine on the tour. He was delighted to find that the chef on board did not disregard his dietary requirements but used the opportunity to show off his skills even when working with a restricted ingredient list.

During the day, they hopped off the yacht to explore some new cultural centre, enchanted by the sights and sounds of places steeped in esoteric magic, building new connections to modern use in their personal study of magic. It was a better lesson than any they could have had from mere textbooks.

It was as if Fabian had been granted access to a whole new world. There was a different manner and use of language that he had to quickly absorb or face humiliation, but as soon as he could pass as one of them he realised that doors that were once imposing and firmly shut to him now swung open with featherlight ease. There were places and shops that he would never have dared to enter that he now strode into with confidence, by the side of Evan and Narcissa. With enough training, he learned to keep his amazement at the sheer excess and luxury of this lifestyle strictly to himself, marvelling silently when he was able to touch exquisite trinkets and souvenirs, like the crystal figures that danced into life when touched by light, or the notebooks bound by marbled vellum that swirled languidly on itself like volcanic lava. With the paltry pocket money he earned from summer jobs, he couldn't resist purchasing some small mementos as gifts for family and friends.

They eventually set foot into Greece, and Evan brought him and Narcissa to visit his maternal grandparents, whom he loved very fondly. They introduced themselves as Aristotle and Aphrodite Ambrosiadou, and spoiled them silly with food, wine and lavish gifts to make up for all the Christmases and birthdays they had missed. Their formidable reputations as one of the key families controlling the magical waterways faded away in light of familial relations and they were just as warm and loving as any good grandparents were. They chatted like old friends, and the fact that they spoke to Fabian as if he were their social equal left him nearly tongue-tied from wonder at times. Inwardly, he felt like he was the only person conscious of the gulf in their place in society.

They spent days lazing around the olive groves, sheltered from the blazing Mediterranean sun by the ancient, interwoven branches, sipping cool spring water and gazing into the sparkling Aegean Sea. Evan declared that he never wanted to leave this place, and Fabian agreed, because Aristotle and Aphrodite were so genial he felt like he belonged in this home. He also had a sneaking feeling they were aware that he was intimately involved with Evan and seemed not to mind one single bit, even exchanging sly nods and winks and allowing them their privacy.

It was, therefore, with bewilderment that Fabian reacted on being asked to pack and leave the house on short notice.

"What's going on?" he mumbled sleepily, reluctant to stir from between the sheets.

"We have to go. Right away," Evan hissed anxiously. Fabian noticed that he had ordered the house elves to do their packing for them and all their belongings were ready to go. On a chair, a set of day clothes had been laid out for him. Evan ordered for him to put the clothes on, and they would sneak out through the service stairs.

"What's the hurry?" Fabian asked.

"Never you mind," Evan replied evasively. "Just do as I say."

It was later, when they were back on the Ulysses that Fabian found out from Narcissa that the reason for the swift exit was the arrival of Evan's estranged mother. With more pressing, Fabian found out that Evan still resented her for leaving him behind when she divorced his father. Apparently, she had chosen to leave with the house elf, and Evan could never forgive her for choosing a house elf over him.

Back on the yacht, yet another soirée was going on. A band was playing some waltzes on deck, and a flurry of expensive mead was called out for all. It was at this moment, graced by the presence of all her family and closest friends, that Edward Tonks decided to ask for Andromeda's hand in marriage, to which she willingly agreed. On bended knee Tonks produced a sparkling engagement ring festooned with the largest diamond Fabian had ever seen and slipped it into her finger. Overwhelmed, she tried to help him stand up after, whereupon he grabbed her in a hug and they kissed passionately, and Fabian could see tears of joy streaming down Druella's face. She felt a surge of accomplishment as a mother, for she had just handed off Bellatrix to the Lestrange family, and her second was well on her way her way to a successful marriage. The third she did not have to worry about, for she had the most number of suitors and she had the luxury of choice.


	19. The Talented Mr Tonks

The glorious summer soon passed and it was the start of yet another school year. Narcissa had thrown herself headlong into preparations for her sister's marriage, and she had requested for numerous bridal catalogues. These she studied closely, bookmarking pages for gowns, bouquets and floral arrangements that inspired her. She sent clippings of these to her sister, who was all too happy to let her do the choosing.

However, in the late autumn, rumours began to circulate that Edward Tonks was an impostor without anything to his name. The rumours were solidified when the notoriously reticent Salem Tonks came out to say that the familial branch Edward claimed to descend from had been wiped out years ago in a tragic Portkey accident in Bermuda.

Scandal swiftly broke. It was not enough that Edward Tonks was a fraud. He had absolutely nothing to his name nor was he born of noble blood. He turned out to be an ordinary boy from a common muggle family in Chiswick with an extraordinary gift for impersonation. The honour of the Black family name had been dragged through the mud by this one Mudblood. There could be no forgiving of what fools he had made of them when he so boldly asked for her hand and they so willingly agreed. Oh the shame! Oh the horror! Oh fie! Here was a devious, scheming man who lusted after the unattainable prize of a daughter of the House of Black. Here was one who could not keep to his natural order in society but had to worm his way up, the stinking, slimy devil of a man. He had wanted to corrupt their pure daughter for his sinful desire and for this he should be punished without mercy.

Things took a turn for the worse when it transpired that Andromeda had not been the foremost victim of this cruel deception. In fact, she soon admitted that she had aided and abetted this fraud, for she truly loved Ted and wanted her family to understand him on equal terms, knowing they would never accept him otherwise. She cited all the times they had laughed appreciatively at the jokes Ted made, or how they admired his intellect or his cunning, the numerous times they called him one of their own, the deep discussions they had about the future of wizarding politics, and how they thought him bright and promising and would entrust him their second daughter in marriage.

This betrayal was too much for Cygnus or Druella to bear. All branches of the Black family soon came out in vehement defence of their victimhood and finally they offered Andromeda an ultimatum—she was to repent and come back into the fold, and she would atone for her sins by marrying a proper pureblood. Failure to do so meant permanent excommunication from the family. All that had defined her as a person up till now she stood to lose, if she so chose to sully herself with this impure breed of humanity.

Andromeda chose Ted.

Narcissa was immediately distraught and was unable to understand her sister's choice. Her perspective had been addled by family propaganda, which sought to assassinate Ted's character, and she also thought her sister weak, for being incapable of making the necessary choice. Narcissa had been brought up with a strong sense of duty to preserve and uphold the name of her family, having been taught that her sole duty as a pureblood was as a custodian of wizarding heritage and it was contrary to everything she had been trained to do. Worse still, she could not find comfort from her cousin nor his paramour.

It was at this point that friction ignited between Fabian and her. Fabian insisted that Andromeda had done nothing wrong and became angry with her for thinking of muggleborns as inferior or less than human. Fabian insisted that her family was at fault and that everything her family did was a misstep. Fabian accused her of being misguided and presumptuous in thinking of herself and her family as the natural guardians of magical heritage. Fabian further attacked the notion that there was a "pure magical heritage" that needed defending. Fabian began to throw around big words like "undermining the validity of the individual" and "unchecked privilege" and "entrenched bigotry" so much so that Narcissa became furious at him and screamed at him for being a cold, uncaring Ravenclaw only too happy to pontificate on other people's misfortune, oblivious to all the emotions at stake.

Fabian, in turn, was extremely infuriated by her accusations of over-intellectualism, declaring that it was the last resort of those with indefensible positions and huffed that if she had any sense in her she would open her eyes to the systematic discrimination faced by the likes of Edward Tonks.

Wailing, Narcissa called to Evan to defend her, but Evan was lost in troubles of his own. His father, in order to defend his sister's honour, had joined the fray of those heaping slander upon slander on Edward, whom Evan found most agreeable on the tour, and it became clearer than ever to him that his father would stand for nothing but the continued purity of the old houses. Evan was increasingly aware of the fact that he was heading ever farther down the path of disappointment to his father. The fact that he was unlikely to bring forth sons of his own started to weigh down on his heart. He knew for certain that his father, who had already found him a disgrace for struggling with his grades, would consider his preference for those of his own gender unnatural and an insult upon the family name. He began to see his future ahead of him—a forced marriage of convenience, followed by loveless reproduction. Was this why his mother had left his father? He wondered if his parents had been forced into marriage and when an heir was perfunctorily produced it was no longer necessary to keep up the pretence of being a couple. He had read of his mother's affairs in the newspaper without comprehending, and back then he believed the accusations of her moral deficiency, her recklessness, her shamelessness. He saw in his future the same vilification his mother received, unless he denied himself everything that was true about him and lived a lie.


	20. Poudre de cheminette

The last straw came when Andromeda, despite all the hurt and humiliation she had caused the family, still decided to send them an invite to her wedding in a Muggle church. It was as if she was taunting them, flaunting her treachery for all to see, delighting in her dirty, shameful transgressions, parading her sins.

It was then that Narcissa wrote one final letter to her sister, begging her to see the light and turn from her mistake before it was too late—

"I'm sorry Mrs Malfoy," Ron Weasley interrupted at this point. "But do you realise what a sanctimonious piece of shit you are?"

Narcissa was immediately taken aback. She looked like she had been struck by lightning, but quickly composed herself.

"With all due respect," Hermione began, "I must agree with Ron, but in kinder words. I cannot stand for your blind loyalty to unquestioned values and it is my sincere hope that you will one day accept your sister's decision and be reconciled with her."

Harry nodded in agreement. He could not tell what Narcissa was truly feeling, for a socialite of her experience could effortlessly don any mask.

There was a sudden frostiness between them. No one dared to speak any further.

"I regret that I shall have to put an end to our interview," Narcissa concluded brusquely. She called for the house elves to show them their way out. Hermione's brows furrowed. She looked like she had more to say, but decided against speaking.

The house elf led them to the drawing room, where she began to prepare the fireplace. Hermione looked around, as if checking that Mrs Malfoy was not within earshot.

She leaned down and asked the house elf if she was in paid employment.

"Oh yes!" Tippy, the house elf, replied, nodding with a wide-eyed expression. "Mrs Malfoy pays us well. Mrs Malfoy doesn't want us running off to other households, you see. Tippy also gets one day off per week." Tippy smiled distantly to herself, as if reminded of what she planned do on her next day off.

Ron looked at Hermione with a sly smile. Hermione grinned at him in turn, as Tippy handed them Floo powder of the finest quality they had ever encountered, suspended in a shimmering crystal jar engraved in gold with the words " _poudre de cheminette_ ". Hermione scooped a small fistful of the iridescent powder and sprinkled it in the fireplace, where it fell gently like snowflakes and transported them through the network in a cloud of cushioned comfort. It was by far the most agreeable Floo journey any of them had ever taken. 

...

There was a knock, hesitant at first but then surer, like a quick rap. Andromeda Tonks opened the door. She had been waiting for the delivery of drawer dividers so that she could get Teddy's socks organised. She had spent the whole of yesterday organising her bookshelves by genre followed by alphabetical order and was hankering for more sorting to do. This sort of tidying up got her into an excited buzz, and she breezed to the door.

Standing at her door, however, was Narcissa Malfoy.

"Andie," Narcissa began, calling her by the nickname she forbade Ted to use ever since she stopped being _their_ Andie.

This rather dampened her jolly mood. Andromeda stared coldly at Narcissa. "What do you want?" she demanded. It was not as if they had spoken in years. Decades, even. The last thing Andromeda remembered about her younger sister was the horrid letter she wrote. It wasn't as if the letter was rude, in fact it was written in the most pleading of terms but it was the underlying message that appalled her. Somehow the veil of politeness only made the message more toxic. When she had first read the message she could afford her sister some leniency back then, assuming that she had done it out of sheer naivety, but the subsequent years had only proven that Narcissa had absolutely no willingness to see the error of her ways.

"I'm sorry," Narcissa began. "I am here to apologise."

"I don't want your apology," Andromeda replied. "I don't need your apology." Inwardly, Andromeda wondered, _why now?_ All the anger she had for her family she had since let fall from her mind, because she was determined not to let them poison her life with Ted. Hearing this apology now, when it was too late to mend anything, when the tide of prevailing norms took any courage out of the action, when it would not be heard by the one who needed to hear it the most, it only served to aggravate and sadden Andromeda. Hearing the apology was empty, and all it did was to trigger the flood of emotions that had held her down for so long and was not easy to free herself from.

"I know," Narcissa breathed, seemingly holding back tears. "But I need your forgiveness."

"And what if I don't want ever want to forgive?" From outside herself Andromeda knew the rising tide of anger would swallow her whole. It was not good for her to be angry. And yet she couldn't help it. Did her sister have any idea how insensitive she actually was, and how selfish her motivations? Her sister, with her large-scale philanthropy projects and showy fundraisers, when it was all transparent vanity.

"Andie," Narcissa begged. "I can help you." With a small gesture she indicated the humble furnishings of her home.

"Go away," Andromeda replied. "If you think you can come here and throw money at us to assuage your guilt you are certainly not welcome."

Narcissa's lower lip began to tremble. "It's not my guilt I want to assuage. You could do with help, Andromeda, and I could start by being a decent human being."

Andromeda looked at her younger sister and shook her head with a wry smile. "I'm not taking your money," she repeated. "You could do with being less presumptuous."

Cissy nodded meekly. "How can I make things right again?" she despaired, her voice barely above a whisper. "You know our family is dead. We're the only ones left. All we've ever done by insisting on our purity is to secure our own extinction."

Andromeda looked at her. For a long while there was a silence between them as they each decided what next to say. Andromeda looked like she was about to close the door on Narcissa, but against her better judgment she threw it open.

"We could start by having tea," Andromeda said. "Sister."

...

_What is really important about human beings is the fact that they are each a unique nexus of relations with others—therefore, no one could ever be considered exactly equivalent to anything or anyone else. It is only by the threat of violence that one can tear people out of those endlessly complicated webs of relationship with others that render them unique._

—David Graeber, _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_ , Chapter Seven – Honour and Degradation


	21. Such a perfect day

When the weather was good, and sometimes, even when the weather was bad, Hermione loved to get out from under the ground and take the short walk to Liverpool Street Station for lunch. There was nothing more she loved than being lost in a crowd so fully alive, and she also loved being in the midst of muggle activity—in a way, it kept her rooted, and in another way, it served to remind her that the two worlds she lived in shared the same spaces.

On this day, she brought along the Moroccan lamb salad with char-grilled vegetables and couscous Ron prepared for her, slyly heated up with a charm just before she left the halls of the Ministry. With her other hand she held a cup of coffee from her favourite coffee shop in the world, one owned by a rather famous muggle author.

Wedged somewhat unglamorously under her armpits was a stack of letters she intended to go through during lunch. She had reached out to several sources for some information that was incredibly difficult to put together, and inside those envelopes contained her surest leads.

With great satisfaction, she found an empty spot by a bench and thought of how perfect this moment was—delectable lamb couscous prepared lovingly by her cookery-obsessed husband, the best coffee this side of London, and, in the letters, answers to questions she had been looking for.

...

Hermione passed a sheet of paper to Dolohov. On it was a printout from a community newspaper from Canada, of an article about a couple who died in a traffic collision.

"I believe these are your parents?" Hermione prompted him.

Dolohov stared at the article, which was printed on white muggle office paper. Steve and Anna Dolman, a well-respected elderly couple active in the community, often working with refugees and homeless shelters, were killed almost instantly on impact when their car was hit by a drunk driver who had dashed past the red lights at an intersection.

Hermione handed him several other sheets of paper to support her claim. Some photos, their obituaries, brief biographies taken from the organisations they volunteered at.

Dolohov said nothing. He was obstinate in his refusal to cooperate with Ms Granger's investigation.

"That's not all," Hermione continued. "I found out about your sister too. She's still alive."

At this, Dolohov looked up with a small measure of surprise. "How is she? What is she doing?"

Hermione surmised that he cared more for his sister than he did for his parents. She took out a small rectangle of thick card stock and slipped it across the table to Dolohov.

"She works in what the muggles call 'investment banking'," Hermione began. "This is her business card."

Out from nowhere, Ron Weasley suddenly piped up: "The muggles say it's an evil job."

Hermione hurriedly shushed Ron, explaining that she didn't want to get into the nuances of evil.

Dolohov had been studying the business card. The logo was a square of blue, and on it was written words such as "Katherine Cohen" and "Fixed Income". The office address was in New York.

"She's a squib," Hermione said plainly, all while her eyes were fixed on him to gauge his reaction. "She was adopted by muggles who brought her up as their own."

Dolohov's face remained unchanged. He said nothing.

"We'll make a deal," Hermione continued. "We will arrange for her to visit you in a neutral setting, without letting her know of your criminal record. Of course, you will be closely supervised by trained aurors for the whole duration. In return, we want you to tell us everything you know about Fabian Prewett."

"'Everything' is a tall order," Dolohov replied.

"Your relationship with Fabian Prewett," Hermione clarified. "We want to know how involved he was with the Death Eaters. We want to know if he lent any support to Voldemort. We want to know how you met, what you did together, and how it ultimately lead to his death, if it is in any way a consequence of the two of you being involved."

Dolohov could feel three pairs of eyes boring into him. There was a long silence, as if he were making it clear that the information they wanted from him would not be easy to obtain.

"I want to see my sister," he finally said.


	22. Nobody said it was easy

In the summer before his final year in Hogwarts, Fabian had successfully applied for work placement at the Ministry, in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Through his job shadowing actual diplomats, he came into contact with Philomena Ambrosiadou, who was on the council of economic cooperation within Wizarding Europe.

He recognised her immediately through Evan's description of his mother, although she knew nothing of him, which was a relief. There was some recent turmoil in the magical economy, caused by the drastic change in the exchange rates of wizarding currency to muggle currency. The muggles had gone and decided to play with the value of their own currency, so it was said, and in doing so managed to accumulate a vast amount of gleaming golden galleons for themselves all while depressing the real wealth of the magical peoples.

The financial crisis had sparked a series of mass outrage at muggles and muggleborns, who were blamed for this havoc by their sheer insistence on imposing their muggle ways on the magical world.

The purported lack of integration on the part of the muggles and muggleborns soon led to the rise of the populist magical nationalism movement, which posited that the magical world should cleave itself from the muggle world and become a fully independent nation of its own.

Being in the department of international magical cooperation placed Fabian at a very good vantage point. He was able to observe that many senior officials inwardly supported the idea of the fully independent magical nation, but the paradox of the statute of secrecy meant that each world, the magical and the muggle, had to exist in the cracks of each other's spaces. To become independent was to admit the existence of magic, and in doing so risk exposing the magical world once more to the threat of violence and persecution that had birthed the statute of secrecy in the first place.

Several emergency meetings were called to rein in the damage of the financial crisis. It was through those meetings that Fabian came to work closely with Philomena Ambrosiadou, taking care of the dreary but essential tasks such as taking down the minutes of her meetings, formatting her policy paper presentations, warming up her tea and buttering her scones.

He soon found inconsistencies between her actual person and Evan's description of her. She was erudite and commanding, and had a voice that people listened to. Though Fabian could not fully agree with her point of view, he found her receptive to his opposing views and the fact that she was willing to engage in conversation with him, a mere intern, rather impressed him some.

Towards the end of his internship, to thank him for his efforts and also because she knew the allowance given to interns was much too paltry, Philomena left Fabian a gift. She asked him to open it only after he went home, but Fabian sneakily unwrapped the gift in the privacy of the loo and found that it was a gold watch that looked incredibly, unbelievably expensive. It was not something he would ever be able to carry off without looking like he stole it or came by it through unsavoury means. He was not even sure he should be accepting such a gift, for a gift of this value was not given freely. He was almost certain that it would come with strings attached.

Just before the end of his final workday at the department, Fabian approached Philomena and told her in the politest way he could that he was unable to accept her gift of a gold watch.

"I understand your concerns about its value and suitability for someone of your standing as you have no established position," Philomena replied, "but in turn I ask you, how much is an item, any item for that matter, truly worth?"

Fabian was puzzled. Was this a trick question? "An item is worth whatever value we ascribe to it," he said.

"Very well, then let it be known that this watch is worthless."

"How could it be?" Fabian exclaimed.

"This watch was meant as a gift for my son on his seventeenth birthday, as tradition dictates. However, he rejected my gift, claiming it meant nothing to him. Hence this watch is worthless to me too, as a reminder of his rejection. It is my hope that you will take this and find it of more value to you."

Fabian tried not to look too shocked at her reply. Evan's mother had meant to give this incredibly beautiful watch for his seventeenth birthday but he refused it. Fabian could not bring himself to reject her once more, and besides, she meant what she said in all honesty and it made a kind of sense. She could not have known of his special relationship with Evan, but by fate he was in a position to make amends.

Fabian decided that he would accept his gift without qualms, and that it was his purpose to pass this on to the original intended recipient.


	23. No one ever said it would be so hard

Evan would hear nothing of it. It was only the first day of seventh year but nothing had gone without a fight between them. When they had a moment to themselves, Fabian said he had something important to pass on to Evan, and he presented the watch in all its shining golden glory, resting atop a cushion of velvet in its luxurious hinged box.

Fabian tried to explain that Philomena terribly, genuinely wanted to be reconciled with him again, and that it was her hope that with this gift, this coming-of-age, Evan would step into full maturity and he could repair his broken relationship with his mother like two grownups would.

Evan went into a sputtering, insufferable tantrum. He accused Fabian of betrayal, having sold himself into a bit-part role in his mother's sinister machinations. He was now her sock puppet, he had been brainwashed, she had cast the Imperius Curse on him.

Fabian was not about to accept Evan's blatant slander and retorted that he had done nothing but massacre his mother's character when she was in fact perfectly gracious and dignified, and began to accuse Evan of a wilful immaturity, and pointed out that he was the only one in the room behaving like a spoilt brat.

Their spat got increasingly heated, and aggravated by the mere sight of the watch, which Fabian was incessantly pushing into his face, Evan shot a spell into Fabian, who instinctively defended himself by holding up the watch. The watch was blasted out of his hand, and its trajectory took it out of the nearby window in an explosive motion.

Fabian gaped at the open window, then at his empty hands. He looked at Evan with an expression of utmost accusation. He ran to the window to check that the falling watch had not resulted in any casualty, and took out his wand to summon the watch back, but before he could utter the incantation, Evan made it clear that he would never speak to him again if Fabian even so much as tried to retrieve the watch. Fabian told him that he was being childish, and with an _accio_ , called the watch back. Evan flew into a rage, absolutely livid that Fabian would defy his wishes, and stormed out of the room.


	24. You're the Top

Neither made any mention of the watch after that. After a while, they were back on speaking terms, but they were not as affectionate as before. Fabian found his attempts to apologise for being rude on that day brushed off rudely in turn, and he could not even so much as think of running his hand through Evan's hair again, or to caress that perfect jawline. They were back on civil terms, but the romantic aspect seemed to have flown out of that same window that night and remained irretrievable. Christmas came along and all the school were dismissed for the holidays. Surprisingly, Fabian received an invite from Narcissa, who was not aware of the sudden chill in the relationship, to a Christmas ball for the benefit of yet another charitable cause.

Fabian was about to decline the invite when Evan replied that of course the both of them would attend the ball, after all that effort Narcissa put into organising it alongside her mother.

At the ball, Fabian was assiduously ignored by Evan, so he stuck to himself by the banquet table, when a ginger-haired man approached him, tall and gangly like himself.

"Are you lost, my dear? You don't look you don't belong here." The man regarded Fabian's ill-fitting rental dress robes with distaste.

Fabian was appalled by his rudeness, although he was not incorrect. Throughout the entire night, Fabian had become increasingly aware that there was a world that was not his own, a world to which Evan belonged and he did not, and that all these balls, these glamorous charity galas with witches and wizards bedecked in flamboyant, exquisite bespoke dress robes and dazzling family jewels were entirely inaccessible to him, that this was a world in which he meant nothing and counted for nothing. He started to long for the world he recognised, the one with his sister and brother and living in a tiny cottage wedged in between a farm and the forest in the Welsh valleys, where everyone was honest and warm and not plagued by some confounded need to uphold outdated traditions.

"I'm Ignatius Prewett," the ginger man said pompously. "And _whom_ might you be?"

Fabian looked at the man. Were they actually...related? He was vaguely aware his father had some brothers who ran off with their various pursuits and none of them bothered to keep in touch.

"I'm Fabian Prewett," he replied.

Ignatius Prewett responded with a look of such exaggerated shock mixed with unmistakable snobbery. "How on earth have you _infiltrated_ this place?" he asked in a melodramatic voice.

"I did not infiltrate, I was _invited_ ," Fabian said indignantly.

"How were you invited? Pray tell, my imagination does not stretch so far."

Fabian was getting annoyed at Ignatius. "Are we related? Because you're being horrid to me."

Ignatius contorted his face with disgust on entertaining the idea that they were related. He looked like he was about to stomp off in a huff, when some other socialite he recognised came up to them and greeted them warmly. Fabian noted with interest the closeness with which they kissed each other on the cheeks. It seemed to him that there was something more going on here, in a way that people with particular inclinations recognised immediately in others who were like them.

Ignatius then swiftly created an excuse that his wife, Lucretia Black, was calling for him and stomped off impetuously.

Fabian was now left with the chore of socialising with someone he knew nothing about. "Are you friends with Ignatius?" he ventured.

The nameless socialite, who was dressed flamboyantly in robes of elaborate gold brocade, responded eagerly. "Yes, Iggy is a dear friend," he stated, as if it was a matter of course.

"Oh," Fabian responded unenthusiastically, failing to come up with empty social niceties. "What do you know of his marriage to Lucretia Black?"

The other wizard looked mildly surprised that he was so ill informed. "Don't you know what happened with Lucie's former husband?" He shuddered. "What a beastly man. Oh poor Lucie, she suffered so heavily under his hand. Now, Iggy, he's a dear one and he is very fond of Lucie, so he took it upon himself to preserve her honour by snatching her the jaws of that ghastly man."

"Oh," Fabian replied, unsure of what else to say. Perhaps his assumptions about his uncle's proclivities were wrong.

The wizard must have sensed his confusion, for he so kindly elaborated on the situation. "Lucretia was Iggy's earliest supporter, back when he was a pauper of a playwright. She was the one who lent him the money to stage his first play. He'll always value her support and she's still his favourite muse."

Fabian nodded mutely. The wizard took pity on his sheer cluelessness, and winking at him, began to say, "I assume we are all _friends of unicorns_ here."

Fabian was seized by a sudden bout of nerves. He looked around searchingly, pretending not to know what the euphemism meant, the same one that all his schoolmates used to mock him with when, at a Care of Magical Creatures lesson in his third year, a unicorn responded best to him out of the whole class.

"It's good that they have what they have now, Lucie and Iggy. He cares for her and she gets to preserve her inheritance. But it must be said no one is under the illusion that this branch will bear fruit."

Fabian nodded again. The wizard looked unimpressed with his lack of enthusiasm. A whirlwind of people flurried around him in air kisses and feigned smiles, and Fabian found himself face to face with his uncle once again.

"Ignatius," he called out. "I heard about what happened with Lucretia."

Ignatius looked at him like he was a speck of dust on a flawless porcelain vase. "That's none of your business," he dismissed.

Fabian looked at him sadly. He had so many things to ask his uncle about. How was it like to climb into the upper echelons of society? How does one manage to have affairs without losing respectability? How did he succeed in mingling with these people, how did he get them to accept him?

Ignatius seemed to have read his mind. "Don't be so common, my dear. I know you're dazzled by all the finery on display but take these words to heart—you will not find the prince or princess you are looking for within these gilded walls. A dark heart lies beneath and it does you well to run from it, as fast and far as you can. But if you choose to stay, dear, realise that the only true nobility is in your own deeds. You will have no allies; you will have no royal one to sweep you off your feet into the sunset on a white winged horse. You'd sooner find yourself the keeper of secrets and the sweeper of things under the rug."

"But what about the one I love?" Fabian blurted. "What will I do with—with him?" His voice trailed off into a whisper at the last pronoun.

Ignatius pulled a face. "Sweetheart, love is the biggest lie that was _ever_ invented."


	25. NEWTs

After Christmas, Evan refused to speak to him anymore, not even acknowledging his presence when they saw each other in the halls. Fabian was confused and his heart turned fragile. He longed so badly to ask Evan if it was truly over between them, but he could not even get close enough to get an answer. He was heartbroken that Evan left him dangling with uncertainty. He wanted to be given a chance to reason things out, to point out to Evan that there was a sensible way to resolve their problems. All this over a stupid watch, Fabian thought, a stupid watch dented from the spell Evan had cast in anger. He just wanted to talk, to breach that maddening gulf of silence between them that stretched ever deeper. He wanted proper closure but it was not granted to him.

At the same time, there were NEWTs to study for that Fabian didn't have the heart to, still nursing the loss of his study partner. He began to wish he had someone he could tell all this to, without fear of being judged or having to explain everything from the beginning. He knew his siblings were out of the question, and when he thought of them he burned with jealousy at the ease with which they found someone they loved that they were still in love with. He knew that he was always the least loveable of the bunch, he was not as attractive and he could go overboard when there was something he felt strongly about. He became increasingly convinced that no one would ever love him as he was, that the only way for it was to transform himself for the person. He resolved to try harder next time, he resolved that if Evan ever spoke to him again he would go on his knees and beg for forgiveness and promise to be the kind of person he wanted him to be, not the kind who would try to interfere where he was not wanted. He wanted and wanted what was lost to him and what he could not have, plagued by insecurity and inferiority.

He spent his final weeks in school crying to himself alone, over his textbooks, feeling like he didn't want to study yet driven by the fear that he was otherwise completely worthless if he failed to live up to his reputation as the kind of student who always did well in exams.

The NEWTs passed in a blur and on the last day of school, he found his brother staring at the noticeboard plastered with sign-up sheets for various job interviews targeted at school-leavers.

"I think I'm signing up for law enforcement," Gideon told him.

For the first time in a long while, Fabian felt like he was pulled from himself as he reacted with shock. His brother had a contract as a professional with the Cannons all lined up. Why the sudden change of heart?

"You heard the news," Gideon said.

Fabian nodded weakly. He had not caught up with the news in a long while and had no idea what Gideon was talking about.

"It's not right, you know? It's not right that all this is happening and I'm not there to stop it."

"What do you want to stop, Gideon?"

"The violence. The extremism," Gideon replied, as if Fabian knew exactly what he was referring to.

All of a sudden, Fabian was overcome with a sense of shame. He had been wallowing for so long he had missed all that was important in the world out there and here was his twin brother doing the heroic thing by sacrificing his lifelong dream to protect others.

"Maybe I should sign up too, eh?" He looked at his brother, who smiled back at him.

Fabian took the quill attached to the noticeboard and put his name on the sheet. He had no clear idea why he was doing this, because the job scope sounded completely wrong for him. But what he thought in that moment was if that his brother could sacrifice his dreams and risk his life to save other people, then there might come a day where someone would have to do the same for him.


	26. And death shall have no dominion

There were not many around to attend, the chapel was barely half-full. In front of the altar lay two coffins, identical, and within the coffins lay two men, identical. One stepped up to deliver a short eulogy, the only one left of the three siblings. Her husband and her children sat in the front pews, a reminder that there was life beyond this death. The children were far too young to understand the horror behind this loss and their innocence was a comfort to her.

And yet, she knew with certainty that the irrevocable, irreversible fact that her brothers were dead would never cease to haunt her for as long as she lived. Of her own family she was the lone person who had not succumbed to death. The guilt of survivorship had placed on her an even greater resolve to see to it that the rest of her family, the one she had created for herself with her husband, would live to old age in ripe and fulfilling lives.

"The thing I remember most fondly of my brothers was the way they could make any person laugh. It was not a laughter borne from cruelty, at the expense of cheap jokes or ill-hatched pranks. It was a laughter that came from kindness, from an unfailing ability to brighten anyone's day. They had hearts overflowing with generosity and they were always willing to show love even to those whose intent was to hurt them. We mourn, not because life was snatched away from them at so young an age, but that the rest of us are now denied the opportunity to be made whole from their goodness. I know that those who so brutally murdered them are still out there, and it is to them that I say that though my brothers are dead, death shall have no dominion over them, for angels such as these never truly leave our side."


	27. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises

The summer was long and muggle London was bursting with tourists from all over the world. There was an inexplicable sense of hope in the air as this was a time when muggles believed in the best of their ability through the acts of their sportswomen and sportsmen in the Summer Olympics.

London was at her magical best, teeming with colour and noise and people and heat. They were right in the heart of this city, the bustling, impossibly touristy heart, in Leicester Square. Of all things, Dolohov had begged for a hamburger, which he was scarfing down with great speed, while simultaneously cramming greasy chips into his mouth. All of which he washed down with monstrous amounts of Coca-Cola, the cup of which was proudly declaring its Olympic credentials. Ron Weasley felt nauseated by this sight.

"Do you know what goes into that hamburger?" he asked sceptically. "This is not food, my friend, this is poison. When you eat food such as this you are torturing yourself, beating your body into a slow, painful death as you shut down its functions by sheer overdose of artificial chemicals that the body cannot process..."

"Can't be worse than the food in Azkaban," Dolohov retorted, with his mouth still full.

Ron made a face. "Surely gruel is better than this. There are oats and rice and that's a good lot more nutrition."

Dolohov scoffed derisively. "Gruel? What are we in, Victorian times?" He gestured at the hordes of tourists in polo shirts and shorts, shod in modern sneakers, draped in accoutrements such as their national flag and the occasional Union Jack purchased from a souvenir stand.

"What do you eat then?" Ron asked, slightly alarmed it was not the gruel he assumed it to be.

"Leftovers? Expired food. To keep the costs of running the prison low, they take in all the stuff that the shops are about to throw away."

"You can't be serious?"

"Sometimes, the fruit is half-rotten by time they get to us," Dolohov said, relishing the horror on Ron's face. "I know, I work in the kitchen."

"You?!" Harry exclaimed. "They put you in the kitchen...with all those knives around?"

Dolohov shrugged. He seemed to enjoy the shock on their faces. "You can ask prison management."

Hermione shook her head in dismay. Azkaban had been privately run after the Ministry sold off some functions in a recent privatisation spree. Some functions, she believed, should never be run for profit. Prisons were one such example. She made a mental note to look into this.

Dolohov finished the last of his hamburger, licking the greasy paper with glee.

"Alright," Harry said, looking at his watch, which used to belong to Fabian Prewett. "It's almost time. Let's head over to Pizza Express. Are you sure you'll be able to eat some more?"

Dolohov nodded enthusiastically, smiling. He looked so happy around food, Hermione noted. It was as if he were a completely different to the one in Azkaban, sullen and silent and extremely difficult. The burly, tattooed, menacing Death Eater persona had seemed to fade away the moment they left the prison.

The group headed off to Pizza Express, where they had arranged for a special meeting with Dolohov's sister, who was in town for a business trip and who also had corporate-sponsored tickets to the Olympics. Dolohov had several tracking spells on him in case he decided to make a break for it, and he also had some spells that invisibly handcuffed him to Hermione. Harry and Ron had been tasked with muggle protection, as Aurors, ensuring that nothing would go wrong.

They were early, and they took their seats at the table. Hermione took out her muggle mobile, procured for this occasion, to check with Katherine Cohen if she was on her way. She asked them to order first, which they did, and she turned up just as the first pizza arrived.

She was dressed smartly in a muggle business suit, tailored to fit perfectly in high-quality fabric. Her handbag was structured and professional, and her blond hair was neatly pulled into a bun. She was supposedly five years younger than Dolohov, which put her in her early fifties, but she looked a great deal younger, especially when contrasted to her Azkaban-aged brother.

There was disbelief on her face. "Antonin?" she asked, her voice ringing with an American accent. "Antonin."

"Katya," he replied.

"Oh gosh," she replied, clapping a hand to her mouth. "I thought you were dead! I thought you died that day..."

"I thought you died too," Dolohov replied.

"What's happened to you? We have so much to catch up on." Katherine looked around the table at Hermione, Harry and Ron. "Are these...your children?"

Harry shifted around in his seat.

"No, Katya," Dolohov said. "Not my children. They're my guards for today. Prison guards, I'm a prisoner, I am ashamed you have to see me like this."

Katya looked up from her pizza, shocked. "What have you done? Oh Tosha...what happened to you?"

"I murdered someone," Dolohov said plainly. "Or people, many people."

"Why would you do that? How could you...? Why?"

"There is no why," Dolohov dismissed. "But I thought you should know. Maybe it's good we are not family anymore."

Katherine shook her head. "No," she said firmly. "We're still family. You have to tell me everything. I want to know all that's happened to you."

"You don't want to know, Katya, trust me. Let's talk about you. You look very well."

"I am well, but maybe very stressed out from my job. But never mind that, I want to talk about you."

"No," Dolohov said, shaking his head.

Katherine reached across the table, holding his hand in hers. "You saved me that day," she began. "Without you I would be long dead."

Hermione's curiosity was piqued, as, she was sure, Ron and Harry's. There was, naturally, the question of how the Dolohov family had come to be scattered all over the world, but the idea that there was some act of heroism from the one who ended up a criminal begged for more investigation.

"I don't want to talk about that. It's all in the past anyway."

Katherine was shaking her head, possibly holding in tears. "I cannot believe you would end up a murderer. Do...mum and dad know? Did you ever find out what happened to them?"

"They're dead, Katya. They moved to Canada a long time ago, perhaps they had given up on finding us. I am fairly sure they must have heard of what I've done too, if they were at all in touch with the news. You couldn't avoid the story. But they must have been ashamed as they have never contacted me all the years I was in prison."

"I didn't hear anything in the news about you."

"That's because you're a squib, Katya, and you've been brought up by muggles."

"What's that?"

Antonin uttered the Russian words for squib and muggles.

"Oh," Katya said. "I thought...I thought all that was a joke! Papa and mama, I mean, my adoptive parents, they said all that stuff about magic was all my imagination and probably my way of coping with the loss of my family. So it was all real, after all? Our magic?"

"It's not very magical," Dolohov said plainly.

"What did you do? What was it that landed you in prison?" Katya asked.

"I killed someone," Dolohov replied. "Someone I was...someone I was in a relationship with at that point in time."

Katya shook her head, dismayed by the implications of this violence. Having grown up in the United States in a progressive household, and as a successful businesswoman in a male-dominated field, she held not a few strong opinions that were feminist in nature and she had read all too much about the connection between murder rates and domestic violence. "Why did you kill her?"

"Him. I killed him," Dolohov replied.

"Why did you kill him?" Katya corrected.

"He just...he didn't fit into the rest of my life," Dolohov said.

"You don't kill anyone for a reason like that!" Katya exclaimed.

"He wouldn't go away," Dolohov said. "I couldn't think of any other way to get rid of him."

Katya had a look of utter disappointment that the brother she had thought so fondly of should turn out to be a criminal.

"I'm sorry, the reality is that you have a murderer for a brother. It may be bad for your business image so I will not mind if we never speak again."

"No, I do want to speak to you again. But right now, I think I need time to process all this." Katya looked at Hermione, indicating that she would like to wrap up and leave. Hermione nodded, and there was some tussle over the restaurant bill, for Katya insisted on paying.

All that done, Ron turned to Dolohov and said, "So you were in a relationship with my Uncle Fabian after all! You're not getting out of explaining this one."


End file.
